The Arrow of Gold
A story between two notes

Joseph Conrad

To the best of our knowledge, the text of this
work is in the “Public Domain” in Australia.
HOWEVER, copyright law varies in other countries, and the work may
still be under copyright in the country from which you are accessing this website.
It is your responsibility to check the applicable copyright laws
in your country before downloading this work.

eBooks@Adelaide
The University of Adelaide Library
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005

FIRST NOTE

The pages which follow have been extracted from a pile of manuscript which was apparently meant for
the eye of one woman only. She seems to have been the writer’s childhood’s friend. They had parted as children, or very
little more than children. Years passed. Then something recalled to the woman the companion of her young days and she
wrote to him: “I have been hearing of you lately. I know where life has brought you. You certainly selected your own
road. But to us, left behind, it always looked as if you had struck out into a pathless desert. We always regarded you
as a person that must be given up for lost. But you have turned up again; and though we may never see each other, my
memory welcomes you and I confess to you I should like to know the incidents on the road which has led you to where you
are now.”

And he answers her: “I believe you are the only one now alive who remembers me as a child. I have heard of you from
time to time, but I wonder what sort of person you are now. Perhaps if I did know I wouldn’t dare put pen to paper. But
I don’t know. I only remember that we were great chums. In fact, I chummed with you even more than with your brothers.
But I am like the pigeon that went away in the fable of the Two Pigeons. If I once start to tell you I would want you
to feel that you have been there yourself. I may overtax your patience with the story of my life so different from
yours, not only in all the facts but altogether in spirit. You may not understand. You may even be shocked. I say all
this to myself; but I know I shall succumb! I have a distinct recollection that in the old days, when you were about
fifteen, you always could make me do whatever you liked.”

He succumbed. He begins his story for her with the minute narration of this adventure which took about twelve months
to develop. In the form in which it is presented here it has been pruned of all allusions to their common past, of all
asides, disquisitions, and explanations addressed directly to the friend of his childhood. And even as it is the whole
thing is of considerable length. It seems that he had not only a memory but that he also knew how to remember. But as
to that opinions may differ.

This, his first great adventure, as he calls it, begins in Marseilles. It ends there, too. Yet it might have
happened anywhere. This does not mean that the people concerned could have come together in pure space. The locality
had a definite importance. As to the time, it is easily fixed by the events at about the middle years of the seventies,
when Don Carlos de Bourbon, encouraged by the general reaction of all Europe against the excesses of communistic
Republicanism, made his attempt for the throne of Spain, arms in hand, amongst the hills and gorges of Guipuzcoa. It is
perhaps the last instance of a Pretender’s adventure for a Crown that History will have to record with the usual grave
moral disapproval tinged by a shamefaced regret for the departing romance. Historians are very much like other
people.

However, History has nothing to do with this tale. Neither is the moral justification or condemnation of conduct
aimed at here. If anything it is perhaps a little sympathy that the writer expects for his buried youth, as he lives it
over again at the end of his insignificant course on this earth. Strange person — yet perhaps not so very different
from ourselves.

A few words as to certain facts may be added.

It may seem that he was plunged very abruptly into this long adventure. But from certain passages (suppressed here
because mixed up with irrelevant matter) it appears clearly that at the time of the meeting in the cafe, Mills had
already gathered, in various quarters, a definite view of the eager youth who had been introduced to him in that
ultra-legitimist salon. What Mills had learned represented him as a young gentleman who had arrived furnished with
proper credentials and who apparently was doing his best to waste his life in an eccentric fashion, with a bohemian set
(one poet, at least, emerged out of it later) on one side, and on the other making friends with the people of the Old
Town, pilots, coasters, sailors, workers of all sorts. He pretended rather absurdly to be a seaman himself and was
already credited with an ill-defined and vaguely illegal enterprise in the Gulf of Mexico. At once it occurred to Mills
that this eccentric youngster was the very person for what the legitimist sympathizers had very much at heart just
then: to organize a supply by sea of arms and ammunition to the Carlist detachments in the South. It was precisely to
confer on that matter with Dona Rita that Captain Blunt had been despatched from Headquarters.

Mills got in touch with Blunt at once and put the suggestion before him. The Captain thought this the very thing. As
a matter of fact, on that evening of Carnival, those two, Mills and Blunt, had been actually looking everywhere for our
man. They had decided that he should be drawn into the affair if it could be done. Blunt naturally wanted to see him
first. He must have estimated him a promising person, but, from another point of view, not dangerous. Thus lightly was
the notorious (and at the same time mysterious) Monsieur George brought into the world; out of the contact of two minds
which did not give a single thought to his flesh and blood.

Their purpose explains the intimate tone given to their first conversation and the sudden introduction of Dona
Rita’s history. Mills, of course, wanted to hear all about it. As to Captain Blunt — I suspect that, at the time, he
was thinking of nothing else. In addition it was Dona Rita who would have to do the persuading; for, after all, such an
enterprise with its ugly and desperate risks was not a trifle to put before a man — however young.

It cannot be denied that Mills seems to have acted somewhat unscrupulously. He himself appears to have had some
doubt about it, at a given moment, as they were driving to the Prado. But perhaps Mills, with his penetration,
understood very well the nature he was dealing with. He might even have envied it. But it’s not my business to excuse
Mills. As to him whom we may regard as Mills’ victim it is obvious that he has never harboured a single reproachful
thought. For him Mills is not to be criticized. A remarkable instance of the great power of mere individuality over the
young.

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort of universal fame and the particular
affection of their citizens. One of such streets is the Cannebiere, and the jest: “If Paris had a Cannebiere it would
be a little Marseilles” is the jocular expression of municipal pride. I, too, I have been under the spell. For me it
has been a street leading into the unknown.

There was a part of it where one could see as many as five big cafes in a resplendent row. That evening I strolled
into one of them. It was by no means full. It looked deserted, in fact, festal and overlighted, but cheerful. The
wonderful street was distinctly cold (it was an evening of carnival), I was very idle, and I was feeling a little
lonely. So I went in and sat down.

The carnival time was drawing to an end. Everybody, high and low, was anxious to have the last fling. Companies of
masks with linked arms and whooping like red Indians swept the streets in crazy rushes while gusts of cold mistral
swayed the gas lights as far as the eye could reach. There was a touch of bedlam in all this.

Perhaps it was that which made me feel lonely, since I was neither masked, nor disguised, nor yelling, nor in any
other way in harmony with the bedlam element of life. But I was not sad. I was merely in a state of sobriety. I had
just returned from my second West Indies voyage. My eyes were still full of tropical splendour, my memory of my
experiences, lawful and lawless, which had their charm and their thrill; for they had startled me a little and had
amused me considerably. But they had left me untouched. Indeed they were other men’s adventures, not mine. Except for a
little habit of responsibility which I had acquired they had not matured me. I was as young as before. Inconceivably
young — still beautifully unthinking — infinitely receptive.

You may believe that I was not thinking of Don Carlos and his fight for a kingdom. Why should I? You don’t want to
think of things which you meet every day in the newspapers and in conversation. I had paid some calls since my return
and most of my acquaintance were legitimists and intensely interested in the events of the frontier of Spain, for
political, religious, or romantic reasons. But I was not interested. Apparently I was not romantic enough. Or was it
that I was even more romantic than all those good people? The affair seemed to me commonplace. That man was attending
to his business of a Pretender.

On the front page of the illustrated paper I saw lying on a table near me, he looked picturesque enough, seated on a
boulder, a big strong man with a square-cut beard, his hands resting on the hilt of a cavalry sabre — and all around
him a landscape of savage mountains. He caught my eye on that spiritedly composed woodcut. (There were no inane
snapshot-reproductions in those days.) It was the obvious romance for the use of royalists but it arrested my
attention.

Just then some masks from outside invaded the cafe, dancing hand in hand in a single file led by a burly man with a
cardboard nose. He gambolled in wildly and behind him twenty others perhaps, mostly Pierrots and Pierrettes holding
each other by the hand and winding in and out between the chairs and tables: eyes shining in the holes of cardboard
faces, breasts panting; but all preserving a mysterious silence.

They were people of the poorer sort (white calico with red spots, costumes), but amongst them there was a girl in a
black dress sewn over with gold half moons, very high in the neck and very short in the skirt. Most of the ordinary
clients of the cafe didn’t even look up from their games or papers. I, being alone and idle, stared abstractedly. The
girl costumed as Night wore a small black velvet mask, what is called in French a “loup.” What made her daintiness join
that obviously rough lot I can’t imagine. Her uncovered mouth and chin suggested refined prettiness.

They filed past my table; the Night noticed perhaps my fixed gaze and throwing her body forward out of the wriggling
chain shot out at me a slender tongue like a pink dart. I was not prepared for this, not even to the extent of an
appreciative “Tres foli,” before she wriggled and hopped away. But having been thus distinguished I could do no less
than follow her with my eyes to the door where the chain of hands being broken all the masks were trying to get out at
once. Two gentlemen coming in out of the street stood arrested in the crush. The Night (it must have been her
idiosyncrasy) put her tongue out at them, too. The taller of the two (he was in evening clothes under a light wide-open
overcoat) with great presence of mind chucked her under the chin, giving me the view at the same time of a flash of
white teeth in his dark, lean face. The other man was very different; fair, with smooth, ruddy cheeks and burly
shoulders. He was wearing a grey suit, obviously bought ready-made, for it seemed too tight for his powerful frame.

That man was not altogether a stranger to me. For the last week or so I had been rather on the look-out for him in
all the public places where in a provincial town men may expect to meet each other. I saw him for the first time
(wearing that same grey ready-made suit) in a legitimist drawing-room where, clearly, he was an object of interest,
especially to the women. I had caught his name as Monsieur Mills. The lady who had introduced me took the earliest
opportunity to murmur into my ear: “A relation of Lord X.” (Un proche parent de Lord X.) And then she added, casting up
her eyes: “A good friend of the King.” Meaning Don Carlos of course.

I looked at the proche parent; not on account of the parentage but marvelling at his air of ease in that cumbrous
body and in such tight clothes, too. But presently the same lady informed me further: “He has come here amongst us un
naufrage.”

I became then really interested. I had never seen a shipwrecked person before. All the boyishness in me was aroused.
I considered a shipwreck as an unavoidable event sooner or later in my future.

Meantime the man thus distinguished in my eyes glanced quietly about and never spoke unless addressed directly by
one of the ladies present. There were more than a dozen people in that drawing-room, mostly women eating fine pastry
and talking passionately. It might have been a Carlist committee meeting of a particularly fatuous character. Even my
youth and inexperience were aware of that. And I was by a long way the youngest person in the room. That quiet Monsieur
Mills intimidated me a little by his age (I suppose he was thirty-five), his massive tranquillity, his clear, watchful
eyes. But the temptation was too great — and I addressed him impulsively on the subject of that shipwreck.

He turned his big fair face towards me with surprise in his keen glance, which (as though he had seen through me in
an instant and found nothing objectionable) changed subtly into friendliness. On the matter of the shipwreck he did not
say much. He only told me that it had not occurred in the Mediterranean, but on the other side of Southern France — in
the Bay of Biscay. “But this is hardly the place to enter on a story of that kind,” he observed, looking round at the
room with a faint smile as attractive as the rest of his rustic but well-bred personality.

I expressed my regret. I should have liked to hear all about it. To this he said that it was not a secret and that
perhaps next time we met. . .

“But where can we meet?” I cried. “I don’t come often to this house, you know.”

“Where? Why on the Cannebiere to be sure. Everybody meets everybody else at least once a day on the pavement
opposite the Bourse.”

This was absolutely true. But though I looked for him on each succeeding day he was nowhere to be seen at the usual
times. The companions of my idle hours (and all my hours were idle just then) noticed my preoccupation and chaffed me
about it in a rather obvious way. They wanted to know whether she, whom I expected to see, was dark or fair; whether
that fascination which kept me on tenterhooks of expectation was one of my aristocrats or one of my marine beauties:
for they knew I had a footing in both these — shall we say circles? As to themselves they were the bohemian circle, not
very wide — half a dozen of us led by a sculptor whom we called Prax for short. My own nick-name was “Young
Ulysses.”

I liked it.

But chaff or no chaff they would have been surprised to see me leave them for the burly and sympathetic Mills. I was
ready to drop any easy company of equals to approach that interesting man with every mental deference. It was not
precisely because of that shipwreck. He attracted and interested me the more because he was not to be seen. The fear
that he might have departed suddenly for England — (or for Spain) — caused me a sort of ridiculous depression as though
I had missed a unique opportunity. And it was a joyful reaction which emboldened me to signal to him with a raised arm
across that cafe.

I was abashed immediately afterwards, when I saw him advance towards my table with his friend. The latter was
eminently elegant. He was exactly like one of those figures one can see of a fine May evening in the neighbourhood of
the Opera-house in Paris. Very Parisian indeed. And yet he struck me as not so perfectly French as he ought to have
been, as if one’s nationality were an accomplishment with varying degrees of excellence. As to Mills, he was perfectly
insular. There could be no doubt about him. They were both smiling faintly at me. The burly Mills attended to the
introduction: “Captain Blunt.”

We shook hands. The name didn’t tell me much. What surprised me was that Mills should have remembered mine so well.
I don’t want to boast of my modesty but it seemed to me that two or three days was more than enough for a man like
Mills to forget my very existence. As to the Captain, I was struck on closer view by the perfect correctness of his
personality. Clothes, slight figure, clear-cut, thin, sun-tanned face, pose, all this was so good that it was saved
from the danger of banality only by the mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn’t meet every day in the south of
France and still less in Italy. Another thing was that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not look sufficiently
professional. That imperfection was interesting, too.

You may think that I am subtilizing my impressions on purpose, but you may take it from a man who has lived a rough,
a very rough life, that it is the subtleties of personalities, and contacts, and events, that count for interest and
memory — and pretty well nothing else. This — you see — is the last evening of that part of my life in which I did not
know that woman. These are like the last hours of a previous existence. It isn’t my fault that they are associated with
nothing better at the decisive moment than the banal splendours of a gilded cafe and the bedlamite yells of carnival in
the street.

We three, however (almost complete strangers to each other), had assumed attitudes of serious amiability round our
table. A waiter approached for orders and it was then, in relation to my order for coffee, that the absolutely first
thing I learned of Captain Blunt was the fact that he was a sufferer from insomnia. In his immovable way Mills began
charging his pipe. I felt extremely embarrassed all at once, but became positively annoyed when I saw our Prax enter
the cafe in a sort of mediaeval costume very much like what Faust wears in the third act. I have no doubt it was meant
for a purely operatic Faust. A light mantle floated from his shoulders. He strode theatrically up to our table and
addressing me as “Young Ulysses” proposed I should go outside on the fields of asphalt and help him gather a few
marguerites to decorate a truly infernal supper which was being organized across the road at the Maison Doree —
upstairs. With expostulatory shakes of the head and indignant glances I called his attention to the fact that I was not
alone. He stepped back a pace as if astonished by the discovery, took off his plumed velvet toque with a low obeisance
so that the feathers swept the floor, and swaggered off the stage with his left hand resting on the hilt of the
property dagger at his belt.

Meantime the well-connected but rustic Mills had been busy lighting his briar and the distinguished Captain sat
smiling to himself. I was horribly vexed and apologized for that intrusion, saying that the fellow was a future great
sculptor and perfectly harmless; but he had been swallowing lots of night air which had got into his head
apparently.

Mills peered at me with his friendly but awfully searching blue eyes through the cloud of smoke he had wreathed
about his big head. The slim, dark Captain’s smile took on an amiable expression. Might he know why I was addressed as
“Young Ulysses” by my friend? and immediately he added the remark with urbane playfulness that Ulysses was an astute
person. Mills did not give me time for a reply. He struck in: “That old Greek was famed as a wanderer — the first
historical seaman.” He waved his pipe vaguely at me.

“Ah! Vraiment!” The polite Captain seemed incredulous and as if weary. “Are you a seaman? In what sense, pray?” We
were talking French and he used the term homme de mer.

Again Mills interfered quietly. “In the same sense in which you are a military man.” (Homme de guerre.)

It was then that I heard Captain Blunt produce one of his striking declarations. He had two of them, and this was
the first.

“I live by my sword.”

It was said in an extraordinary dandified manner which in conjunction with the matter made me forget my tongue in my
head. I could only stare at him. He added more naturally: “2nd Reg. Castille, Cavalry.” Then with marked stress in
Spanish, “En las filas legitimas.”

Mills was heard, unmoved, like Jove in his cloud: “He’s on leave here.”

“Of course I don’t shout that fact on the housetops,” the Captain addressed me pointedly, “any more than our friend
his shipwreck adventure. We must not strain the toleration of the French authorities too much! It wouldn’t be correct —
and not very safe either.”

I became suddenly extremely delighted with my company. A man who “lived by his sword,” before my eyes, close at my
elbow! So such people did exist in the world yet! I had not been born too late! And across the table with his air of
watchful, unmoved benevolence, enough in itself to arouse one’s interest, there was the man with the story of a
shipwreck that mustn’t be shouted on housetops. Why?

I understood very well why, when he told me that he had joined in the Clyde a small steamer chartered by a relative
of his, “a very wealthy man,” he observed (probably Lord X, I thought), to carry arms and other supplies to the Carlist
army. And it was not a shipwreck in the ordinary sense. Everything went perfectly well to the last moment when suddenly
the Numancia (a Republican ironclad) had appeared and chased them ashore on the French coast below Bayonne. In a few
words, but with evident appreciation of the adventure, Mills described to us how he swam to the beach clad simply in a
money belt and a pair of trousers. Shells were falling all round till a tiny French gunboat came out of Bayonne and
shooed the Numancia away out of territorial waters.

He was very amusing and I was fascinated by the mental picture of that tranquil man rolling in the surf and emerging
breathless, in the costume you know, on the fair land of France, in the character of a smuggler of war material.
However, they had never arrested or expelled him, since he was there before my eyes. But how and why did he get so far
from the scene of his sea adventure was an interesting question. And I put it to him with most naive indiscretion which
did not shock him visibly. He told me that the ship being only stranded, not sunk, the contraband cargo aboard was
doubtless in good condition. The French custom-house men were guarding the wreck. If their vigilance could be — h’m —
removed by some means, or even merely reduced, a lot of these rifles and cartridges could be taken off quietly at night
by certain Spanish fishing boats. In fact, salved for the Carlists, after all. He thought it could be done
. . . .

I said with professional gravity that given a few perfectly quiet nights (rare on that coast) it could certainly be
done.

Mr. Mills was not afraid of the elements. It was the highly inconvenient zeal of the French custom-house people that
had to be dealt with in some way.

“Heavens!” I cried, astonished. “You can’t bribe the French Customs. This isn’t a South-American republic.”

“Is it a republic?” he murmured, very absorbed in smoking his wooden pipe.

“Well, isn’t it?”

He murmured again, “Oh, so little.” At this I laughed, and a faintly humorous expression passed over Mills’ face.
No. Bribes were out of the question, he admitted. But there were many legitimist sympathies in Paris. A proper person
could set them in motion and a mere hint from high quarters to the officials on the spot not to worry over-much about
that wreck . . . .

What was most amusing was the cool, reasonable tone of this amazing project. Mr. Blunt sat by very detached, his
eyes roamed here and there all over the cafe; and it was while looking upward at the pink foot of a fleshy and very
much foreshortened goddess of some sort depicted on the ceiling in an enormous composition in the Italian style that he
let fall casually the words, “She will manage it for you quite easily.”

“Every Carlist agent in Bayonne assured me of that,” said Mr. Mills. “I would have gone straight to Paris only I was
told she had fled here for a rest; tired, discontented. Not a very encouraging report.”

“These flights are well known,” muttered Mr. Blunt. “You shall see her all right.”

“Yes. They told me that you . . . ”

I broke in: “You mean to say that you expect a woman to arrange that sort of thing for you?”

“A trifle, for her,” Mr. Blunt remarked indifferently. “At that sort of thing women are best. They have less
scruples.”

“More audacity,” interjected Mr. Mills almost in a whisper.

Mr. Blunt kept quiet for a moment, then: “You see,” he addressed me in a most refined tone, “a mere man may suddenly
find himself being kicked down the stairs.”

I don’t know why I should have felt shocked by that statement. It could not be because it was untrue. The other did
not give me time to offer any remark. He inquired with extreme politeness what did I know of South American republics?
I confessed that I knew very little of them. Wandering about the Gulf of Mexico I had a look-in here and there; and
amongst others I had a few days in Haiti which was of course unique, being a negro republic. On this Captain Blunt
began to talk of negroes at large. He talked of them with knowledge, intelligence, and a sort of contemptuous
affection. He generalized, he particularized about the blacks; he told anecdotes. I was interested, a little
incredulous, and considerably surprised. What could this man with such a boulevardier exterior that he looked
positively like, an exile in a provincial town, and with his drawing-room manner — what could he know of negroes?

Mills, sitting silent with his air of watchful intelligence, seemed to read my thoughts, waved his pipe slightly and
explained: “The Captain is from South Carolina.”

“Oh,” I murmured, and then after the slightest of pauses I heard the second of Mr. J. K. Blunt’s declarations.

“Yes,” he said. “Je suis Americain, catholique et gentil-homme,” in a tone contrasting so strongly with the smile,
which, as it were, underlined the uttered words, that I was at a loss whether to return the smile in kind or
acknowledge the words with a grave little bow. Of course I did neither and there fell on us an odd, equivocal silence.
It marked our final abandonment of the French language. I was the one to speak first, proposing that my companions
should sup with me, not across the way, which would be riotous with more than one “infernal” supper, but in another
much more select establishment in a side street away from the Cannebiere. It flattered my vanity a little to be able to
say that I had a corner table always reserved in the Salon des Palmiers, otherwise Salon Blanc, where the atmosphere
was legitimist and extremely decorous besides — even in Carnival time. “Nine tenths of the people there,” I said,
“would be of your political opinions, if that’s an inducement. Come along. Let’s be festive,” I encouraged them.

I didn’t feel particularly festive. What I wanted was to remain in my company and break an inexplicable feeling of
constraint of which I was aware. Mills looked at me steadily with a faint, kind smile.

“No,” said Blunt. “Why should we go there? They will be only turning us out in the small hours, to go home and face
insomnia. Can you imagine anything more disgusting?”

He was smiling all the time, but his deep-set eyes did not lend themselves to the expression of whimsical politeness
which he tried to achieve. He had another suggestion to offer. Why shouldn’t we adjourn to his rooms? He had there
materials for a dish of his own invention for which he was famous all along the line of the Royal Cavalry outposts, and
he would cook it for us. There were also a few bottles of some white wine, quite possible, which we could drink out of
Venetian cut-glass goblets. A bivouac feast, in fact. And he wouldn’t turn us out in the small hours. Not he. He
couldn’t sleep.

Need I say I was fascinated by the idea? Well, yes. But somehow I hesitated and looked towards Mills, so much my
senior. He got up without a word. This was decisive; for no obscure premonition, and of something indefinite at that,
could stand against the example of his tranquil personality.

Chapter 2

The street in which Mr. Blunt lived presented itself to our eyes, narrow, silent, empty, and dark,
but with enough gas-lamps in it to disclose its most striking feature: a quantity of flag-poles sticking out above many
of its closed portals. It was the street of Consuls and I remarked to Mr. Blunt that coming out in the morning he could
survey the flags of all nations almost — except his own. (The U. S. consulate was on the other side of the town.) He
mumbled through his teeth that he took good care to keep clear of his own consulate.

“Are you afraid of the consul’s dog?” I asked jocularly. The consul’s dog weighed about a pound and a half and was
known to the whole town as exhibited on the consular fore-arm in all places, at all hours, but mainly at the hour of
the fashionable promenade on the Prado.

But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear: “They are all Yankees there.”

I murmured a confused “Of course.”

Books are nothing. I discovered that I had never been aware before that the Civil War in America was not printed
matter but a fact only about ten years old. Of course. He was a South Carolinian gentleman. I was a little ashamed of
my want of tact. Meantime, looking like the conventional conception of a fashionable reveller, with his opera-hat
pushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was having some slight difficulty with his latch-key; for the house before which
we had stopped was not one of those many-storied houses that made up the greater part of the street. It had only one
row of windows above the ground floor. Dead walls abutting on to it indicated that it had a garden. Its dark front
presented no marked architectural character, and in the flickering light of a street lamp it looked a little as though
it had gone down in the world. The greater then was my surprise to enter a hall paved in black and white marble and in
its dimness appearing of palatial proportions. Mr. Blunt did not turn up the small solitary gas-jet, but led the way
across the black and white pavement past the end of the staircase, past a door of gleaming dark wood with a heavy
bronze handle. It gave access to his rooms he said; but he took us straight on to the studio at the end of the
passage.

It was rather a small place tacked on in the manner of a lean-to to the garden side of the house. A large lamp was
burning brightly there. The floor was of mere flag-stones but the few rugs scattered about though extremely worn were
very costly. There was also there a beautiful sofa upholstered in pink figured silk, an enormous divan with many
cushions, some splendid arm-chairs of various shapes (but all very shabby), a round table, and in the midst of these
fine things a small common iron stove. Somebody must have been attending it lately, for the fire roared and the warmth
of the place was very grateful after the bone-searching cold blasts of mistral outside.

Mills without a word flung himself on the divan and, propped on his arm, gazed thoughtfully at a distant corner
where in the shadow of a monumental carved wardrobe an articulated dummy without head or hands but with beautifully
shaped limbs composed in a shrinking attitude, seemed to be embarrassed by his stare.

As we sat enjoying the bivouac hospitality (the dish was really excellent and our host in a shabby grey jacket still
looked the accomplished man-about-town) my eyes kept on straying towards that corner. Blunt noticed this and remarked
that I seemed to be attracted by the Empress.

“It’s disagreeable,” I said. “It seems to lurk there like a shy skeleton at the feast. But why do you give the name
of Empress to that dummy?”

“Because it sat for days and days in the robes of a Byzantine Empress to a painter . . . I wonder where he
discovered these priceless stuffs . . . You knew him, I believe?”

Mills lowered his head slowly, then tossed down his throat some wine out of a Venetian goblet.

“This house is full of costly objects. So are all his other houses, so is his place in Paris — that mysterious
Pavilion hidden away in Passy somewhere.”

Mills knew the Pavilion. The wine had, I suppose, loosened his tongue. Blunt, too, lost something of his reserve.
From their talk I gathered the notion of an eccentric personality, a man of great wealth, not so much solitary as
difficult of access, a collector of fine things, a painter known only to very few people and not at all to the public
market. But as meantime I had been emptying my Venetian goblet with a certain regularity (the amount of heat given out
by that iron stove was amazing; it parched one’s throat, and the straw-coloured wine didn’t seem much stronger than so
much pleasantly flavoured water) the voices and the impressions they conveyed acquired something fantastic to my mind.
Suddenly I perceived that Mills was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. I had not noticed him taking off his coat. Blunt had
unbuttoned his shabby jacket, exposing a lot of starched shirt-front with the white tie under his dark shaved chin. He
had a strange air of insolence — or so it seemed to me. I addressed him much louder than I intended really.

“Did you know that extraordinary man?”

“To know him personally one had to be either very distinguished or very lucky. Mr. Mills here. . .”

“Yes, I have been lucky,” Mills struck in. “It was my cousin who was distinguished. That’s how I managed to enter
his house in Paris — it was called the Pavilion — twice.”

“And saw Dona Rita twice, too?” asked Blunt with an indefinite smile and a marked emphasis. Mills was also emphatic
in his reply but with a serious face.

“I am not an easy enthusiast where women are concerned, but she was without doubt the most admirable find of his
amongst all the priceless items he had accumulated in that house — the most admirable . . . ”

“Ah! But, you see, of all the objects there she was the only one that was alive,” pointed out Blunt with the
slightest possible flavour of sarcasm.

“Immensely so,” affirmed Mills. “Not because she was restless, indeed she hardly ever moved from that couch between
the windows — you know.”

“No. I don’t know. I’ve never been in there,” announced Blunt with that flash of white teeth so strangely without
any character of its own that it was merely disturbing.

“But she radiated life,” continued Mills. “She had plenty of it, and it had a quality. My cousin and Henry Allegre
had a lot to say to each other and so I was free to talk to her. At the second visit we were like old friends, which
was absurd considering that all the chances were that we would never meet again in this world or in the next. I am not
meddling with theology but it seems to me that in the Elysian fields she’ll have her place in a very special
company.”

All this in a sympathetic voice and in his unmoved manner. Blunt produced another disturbing white flash and
muttered:

“I should say mixed.” Then louder: “As for instance . . . ”

“As for instance Cleopatra,” answered Mills quietly. He added after a pause: “Who was not exactly pretty.”

“I should have thought rather a La Valliere,” Blunt dropped with an indifference of which one did not know what to
make. He may have begun to be bored with the subject. But it may have been put on, for the whole personality was not
clearly definable. I, however, was not indifferent. A woman is always an interesting subject and I was thoroughly awake
to that interest. Mills pondered for a while with a sort of dispassionate benevolence, at last:

“Yes, Dona Rita as far as I know her is so varied in her simplicity that even that is possible,” he said. “Yes. A
romantic resigned La Valliere . . . who had a big mouth.”

I felt moved to make myself heard.

“Did you know La Valliere, too?” I asked impertinently.

Mills only smiled at me. “No. I am not quite so old as that,” he said. “But it’s not very difficult to know facts of
that kind about a historical personage. There were some ribald verses made at the time, and Louis XIV was congratulated
on the possession — I really don’t remember how it goes — on the possession of:

“ . . . de ce bec amoureux Qui d’une oreille e l’autre va, Tra le le.

or something of the sort. It needn’t be from ear to ear, but it’s a fact that a big mouth is often a sign of a
certain generosity of mind and feeling. Young man, beware of women with small mouths. Beware of the others, too, of
course; but a small mouth is a fatal sign. Well, the royalist sympathizers can’t charge Dona Rita with any lack of
generosity from what I hear. Why should I judge her? I have known her for, say, six hours altogether. It was enough to
feel the seduction of her native intelligence and of her splendid physique. And all that was brought home to me so
quickly,” he concluded, “because she had what some Frenchman has called the ‘terrible gift of familiarity’.”

Blunt had been listening moodily. He nodded assent.

“Yes!” Mills’ thoughts were still dwelling in the past. “And when saying good-bye she could put in an instant an
immense distance between herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect figure, a change of the physiognomy: it
was like being dismissed by a person born in the purple. Even if she did offer you her hand — as she did to me — it was
as if across a broad river. Trick of manner or a bit of truth peeping out? Perhaps she’s really one of those
inaccessible beings. What do you think, Blunt?”

It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range of sensitiveness had been increased already)
displeased or rather disturbed me strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But after a while he turned to me.

“That thick man,” he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, “is as fine as a needle. All these statements about the
seduction and then this final doubt expressed after only two visits which could not have included more than six hours
altogether and this some three years ago! But it is Henry Allegre that you should ask this question, Mr. Mills.”

“I haven’t the secret of raising the dead,” answered Mills good humouredly. “And if I had I would hesitate. It would
seem such a liberty to take with a person one had known so slightly in life.”

“And yet Henry Allegre is the only person to ask about her, after all this uninterrupted companionship of years,
ever since he discovered her; all the time, every breathing moment of it, till, literally, his very last breath. I
don’t mean to say she nursed him. He had his confidential man for that. He couldn’t bear women about his person. But
then apparently he couldn’t bear this one out of his sight. She’s the only woman who ever sat to him, for he would
never suffer a model inside his house. That’s why the ‘Girl in the Hat’ and the ‘Byzantine Empress’ have that family
air, though neither of them is really a likeness of Dona Rita . . . You know my mother?”

Mills inclined his body slightly and a fugitive smile vanished from his lips. Blunt’s eyes were fastened on the very
centre of his empty plate.

“Then perhaps you know my mother’s artistic and literary associations,” Blunt went on in a subtly changed tone. “My
mother has been writing verse since she was a girl of fifteen. She’s still writing verse. She’s still fifteen — a
spoiled girl of genius. So she requested one of her poet friends — no less than Versoy himself — to arrange for a visit
to Henry Allegre’s house. At first he thought he hadn’t heard aright. You must know that for my mother a man that
doesn’t jump out of his skin for any woman’s caprice is not chivalrous. But perhaps you do know? . . .”

Mills shook his head with an amused air. Blunt, who had raised his eyes from his plate to look at him, started
afresh with great deliberation.

“She gives no peace to herself or her friends. My mother’s exquisitely absurd. You understand that all these
painters, poets, art collectors (and dealers in bric-e-brac, he interjected through his teeth) of my mother are not in
my way; but Versoy lives more like a man of the world. One day I met him at the fencing school. He was furious. He
asked me to tell my mother that this was the last effort of his chivalry. The jobs she gave him to do were too
difficult. But I daresay he had been pleased enough to show the influence he had in that quarter. He knew my mother
would tell the world’s wife all about it. He’s a spiteful, gingery little wretch. The top of his head shines like a
billiard ball. I believe he polishes it every morning with a cloth. Of course they didn’t get further than the big
drawing-room on the first floor, an enormous drawing-room with three pairs of columns in the middle. The double doors
on the top of the staircase had been thrown wide open, as if for a visit from royalty. You can picture to yourself my
mother, with her white hair done in some 18th century fashion and her sparkling black eyes, penetrating into those
splendours attended by a sort of bald-headed, vexed squirrel — and Henry Allegre coming forward to meet them like a
severe prince with the face of a tombstone Crusader, big white hands, muffled silken voice, half-shut eyes, as if
looking down at them from a balcony. You remember that trick of his, Mills?”

Mills emitted an enormous cloud of smoke out of his distended cheeks.

“I daresay he was furious, too,” Blunt continued dispassionately. “But he was extremely civil. He showed her all the
‘treasures’ in the room, ivories, enamels, miniatures, all sorts of monstrosities from Japan, from India, from
Timbuctoo . . . for all I know . . . He pushed his condescension so far as to have the ‘Girl in the
Hat’ brought down into the drawing-room — half length, unframed. They put her on a chair for my mother to look at. The
‘Byzantine Empress’ was already there, hung on the end wall — full length, gold frame weighing half a ton. My mother
first overwhelms the ‘Master’ with thanks, and then absorbs herself in the adoration of the ‘Girl in the Hat.’ Then she
sighs out: ‘It should be called Diaphaneite, if there is such a word. Ah! This is the last expression of modernity!’
She puts up suddenly her face-e-main and looks towards the end wall. ‘And that — Byzantium itself! Who was she, this
sullen and beautiful Empress?’

“‘The one I had in my mind was Theodosia!’ Allegre consented to answer. ‘Originally a slave girl — from
somewhere.’

“My mother can be marvellously indiscreet when the whim takes her. She finds nothing better to do than to ask the
‘Master’ why he took his inspiration for those two faces from the same model. No doubt she was proud of her discerning
eye. It was really clever of her. Allegre, however, looked on it as a colossal impertinence; but he answered in his
silkiest tones:

“‘Perhaps it is because I saw in that woman something of the women of all time.’

“My mother might have guessed that she was on thin ice there. She is extremely intelligent. Moreover, she ought to
have known. But women can be miraculously dense sometimes. So she exclaims, ‘Then she is a wonder!’ And with some
notion of being complimentary goes on to say that only the eyes of the discoverer of so many wonders of art could have
discovered something so marvellous in life. I suppose Allegre lost his temper altogether then; or perhaps he only
wanted to pay my mother out, for all these ‘Masters’ she had been throwing at his head for the last two hours. He
insinuates with the utmost politeness:

“‘As you are honouring my poor collection with a visit you may like to judge for yourself as to the inspiration of
these two pictures. She is upstairs changing her dress after our morning ride. But she wouldn’t be very long. She might
be a little surprised at first to be called down like this, but with a few words of preparation and purely as a matter
of art. . .’

“There were never two people more taken aback. Versoy himself confesses that he dropped his tall hat with a crash. I
am a dutiful son, I hope, but I must say I should have liked to have seen the retreat down the great staircase. Ha! Ha!
Ha!”

He laughed most undutifully and then his face twitched grimly.

“That implacable brute Allegre followed them down ceremoniously and put my mother into the fiacre at the door with
the greatest deference. He didn’t open his lips though, and made a great bow as the fiacre drove away. My mother didn’t
recover from her consternation for three days. I lunch with her almost daily and I couldn’t imagine what was the
matter. Then one day. . .”

He glanced round the table, jumped up and with a word of excuse left the studio by a small door in a corner. This
startled me into the consciousness that I had been as if I had not existed for these two men. With his elbows propped
on the table Mills had his hands in front of his face clasping the pipe from which he extracted now and then a puff of
smoke, staring stolidly across the room.

I was moved to ask in a whisper:

“Do you know him well?”

“I don’t know what he is driving at,” he answered drily. “But as to his mother she is not as volatile as all that. I
suspect it was business. It may have been a deep plot to get a picture out of Allegre for somebody. My cousin as likely
as not. Or simply to discover what he had. The Blunts lost all their property and in Paris there are various ways of
making a little money, without actually breaking anything. Not even the law. And Mrs. Blunt really had a position once
— in the days of the Second Empire — and so. . .”

I listened open-mouthed to these things into which my West-Indian experiences could not have given me an insight.
But Mills checked himself and ended in a changed tone.

“It’s not easy to know what she would be at, either, in any given instance. For the rest, spotlessly honourable. A
delightful, aristocratic old lady. Only poor.”

A bump at the door silenced him and immediately Mr. John Blunt, Captain of Cavalry in the Army of Legitimity,
first-rate cook (as to one dish at least), and generous host, entered clutching the necks of four more bottles between
the fingers of his hand.

“I stumbled and nearly smashed the lot,” he remarked casually. But even I, with all my innocence, never for a moment
believed he had stumbled accidentally. During the uncorking and the filling up of glasses a profound silence reigned;
but neither of us took it seriously — any more than his stumble.

“One day,” he went on again in that curiously flavoured voice of his, “my mother took a heroic decision and made up
her mind to get up in the middle of the night. You must understand my mother’s phraseology. It meant that she would be
up and dressed by nine o’clock. This time it was not Versoy that was commanded for attendance, but I. You may imagine
how delighted I was . . . .”

It was very plain to me that Blunt was addressing himself exclusively to Mills: Mills the mind, even more than Mills
the man. It was as if Mills represented something initiated and to be reckoned with. I, of course, could have no such
pretensions. If I represented anything it was a perfect freshness of sensations and a refreshing ignorance, not so much
of what life may give one (as to that I had some ideas at least) but of what it really contains. I knew very well that
I was utterly insignificant in these men’s eyes. Yet my attention was not checked by that knowledge. It’s true they
were talking of a woman, but I was yet at the age when this subject by itself is not of overwhelming interest. My
imagination would have been more stimulated probably by the adventures and fortunes of a man. What kept my interest
from flagging was Mr. Blunt himself. The play of the white gleams of his smile round the suspicion of grimness of his
tone fascinated me like a moral incongruity.

So at the age when one sleeps well indeed but does feel sometimes as if the need of sleep were a mere weakness of a
distant old age, I kept easily awake; and in my freshness I was kept amused by the contrast of personalities, of the
disclosed facts and moral outlook with the rough initiations of my West-Indian experience. And all these things were
dominated by a feminine figure which to my imagination had only a floating outline, now invested with the grace of
girlhood, now with the prestige of a woman; and indistinct in both these characters. For these two men had SEEN her,
while to me she was only being “presented,” elusively, in vanishing words, in the shifting tones of an unfamiliar
voice.

She was being presented to me now in the Bois de Boulogne at the early hour of the ultra-fashionable world (so I
understood), on a light bay “bit of blood” attended on the off side by that Henry Allegre mounted on a dark brown
powerful weight carrier; and on the other by one of Allegre’s acquaintances (the man had no real friends),
distinguished frequenters of that mysterious Pavilion. And so that side of the frame in which that woman appeared to
one down the perspective of the great Allee was not permanent. That morning when Mr. Blunt had to escort his mother
there for the gratification of her irresistible curiosity (of which he highly disapproved) there appeared in
succession, at that woman’s or girl’s bridle-hand, a cavalry general in red breeches, on whom she was smiling; a rising
politician in a grey suit, who talked to her with great animation but left her side abruptly to join a personage in a
red fez and mounted on a white horse; and then, some time afterwards, the vexed Mr. Blunt and his indiscreet mother
(though I really couldn’t see where the harm was) had one more chance of a good stare. The third party that time was
the Royal Pretender (Allegre had been painting his portrait lately), whose hearty, sonorous laugh was heard long before
the mounted trio came riding very slowly abreast of the Blunts. There was colour in the girl’s face. She was not
laughing. Her expression was serious and her eyes thoughtfully downcast. Blunt admitted that on that occasion the
charm, brilliance, and force of her personality was adequately framed between those magnificently mounted, paladin-like
attendants, one older than the other but the two composing together admirably in the different stages of their manhood.
Mr. Blunt had never before seen Henry Allegre so close. Allegre was riding nearest to the path on which Blunt was
dutifully giving his arm to his mother (they had got out of their fiacre) and wondering if that confounded fellow would
have the impudence to take off his hat. But he did not. Perhaps he didn’t notice. Allegre was not a man of wandering
glances. There were silver hairs in his beard but he looked as solid as a statue. Less than three months afterwards he
was gone.

“What was it?” asked Mills, who had not changed his pose for a very long time.

“Oh, an accident. But he lingered. They were on their way to Corsica. A yearly pilgrimage. Sentimental perhaps. It
was to Corsica that he carried her off — I mean first of all.”

There was the slightest contraction of Mr. Blunt’s facial muscles. Very slight; but I, staring at the narrator after
the manner of all simple souls, noticed it; the twitch of a pain which surely must have been mental. There was also a
suggestion of effort before he went on: “I suppose you know how he got hold of her?” in a tone of ease which was
astonishingly ill-assumed for such a worldly, self-controlled, drawing-room person.

Mills changed his attitude to look at him fixedly for a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair and with interest —
I don’t mean curiosity, I mean interest: “Does anybody know besides the two parties concerned?” he asked, with
something as it were renewed (or was it refreshed?) in his unmoved quietness. “I ask because one has never heard any
tales. I remember one evening in a restaurant seeing a man come in with a lady — a beautiful lady — very particularly
beautiful, as though she had been stolen out of Mahomet’s paradise. With Dona Rita it can’t be anything as definite as
that. But speaking of her in the same strain, I’ve always felt that she looked as though Allegre had caught her in the
precincts of some temple . . . in the mountains.”

I was delighted. I had never heard before a woman spoken about in that way, a real live woman that is, not a woman
in a book. For this was no poetry and yet it seemed to put her in the category of visions. And I would have lost myself
in it if Mr. Blunt had not, most unexpectedly, addressed himself to me.

“I told you that man was as fine as a needle.”

And then to Mills: “Out of a temple? We know what that means.” His dark eyes flashed: “And must it be really in the
mountains?” he added.

“Or in a desert,” conceded Mills, “if you prefer that. There have been temples in deserts, you know.”

Blunt had calmed down suddenly and assumed a nonchalant pose.

“As a matter of fact, Henry Allegre caught her very early one morning in his own old garden full of thrushes and
other small birds. She was sitting on a stone, a fragment of some old balustrade, with her feet in the damp grass, and
reading a tattered book of some kind. She had on a short, black, two-penny frock (une petite robe de deux sous) and
there was a hole in one of her stockings. She raised her eyes and saw him looking down at her thoughtfully over that
ambrosian beard of his, like Jove at a mortal. They exchanged a good long stare, for at first she was too startled to
move; and then he murmured, “Restez donc.” She lowered her eyes again on her book and after a while heard him walk away
on the path. Her heart thumped while she listened to the little birds filling the air with their noise. She was not
frightened. I am telling you this positively because she has told me the tale herself. What better authority can you
have. . .?” Blunt paused.

“That’s true. She’s not the sort of person to lie about her own sensations,” murmured Mills above his clasped
hands.

“Nothing can escape his penetration,” Blunt remarked to me with that equivocal urbanity which made me always feel
uncomfortable on Mills’ account. “Positively nothing.” He turned to Mills again. “After some minutes of immobility —
she told me — she arose from her stone and walked slowly on the track of that apparition. Allegre was nowhere to be
seen by that time. Under the gateway of the extremely ugly tenement house, which hides the Pavilion and the garden from
the street, the wife of the porter was waiting with her arms akimbo. At once she cried out to Rita: ‘You were caught by
our gentleman.’

“As a matter of fact, that old woman, being a friend of Rita’s aunt, allowed the girl to come into the garden
whenever Allegre was away. But Allegre’s goings and comings were sudden and unannounced; and that morning, Rita,
crossing the narrow, thronged street, had slipped in through the gateway in ignorance of Allegre’s return and unseen by
the porter’s wife.

“The child, she was but little more than that then, expressed her regret of having perhaps got the kind porter’s
wife into trouble.

“The old woman said with a peculiar smile: ‘Your face is not of the sort that gets other people into trouble. My
gentleman wasn’t angry. He says you may come in any morning you like.’

“Rita, without saying anything to this, crossed the street back again to the warehouse full of oranges where she
spent most of her waking hours. Her dreaming, empty, idle, thoughtless, unperturbed hours, she calls them. She crossed
the street with a hole in her stocking. She had a hole in her stocking not because her uncle and aunt were poor (they
had around them never less than eight thousand oranges, mostly in cases) but because she was then careless and untidy
and totally unconscious of her personal appearance. She told me herself that she was not even conscious then of her
personal existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilight life of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, and her uncle, the orange
merchant, a Basque peasant, to whom her other uncle, the great man of the family, the priest of some parish in the
hills near Tolosa, had sent her up at the age of thirteen or thereabouts for safe keeping. She is of peasant stock, you
know. This is the true origin of the ‘Girl in the Hat’ and of the ‘Byzantine Empress’ which excited my dear mother so
much; of the mysterious girl that the privileged personalities great in art, in letters, in politics, or simply in the
world, could see on the big sofa during the gatherings in Allegre’s exclusive Pavilion: the Dona Rita of their
respectful addresses, manifest and mysterious, like an object of art from some unknown period; the Dona Rita of the
initiated Paris. Dona Rita and nothing more — unique and indefinable.” He stopped with a disagreeable smile.

“And of peasant stock?” I exclaimed in the strangely conscious silence that fell between Mills and Blunt.

“Oh! All these Basques have been ennobled by Don Sanche II,” said Captain Blunt moodily. “You see coats of arms
carved over the doorways of the most miserable caserios. As far as that goes she’s Dona Rita right enough whatever else
she is or is not in herself or in the eyes of others. In your eyes, for instance, Mills. Eh?”

For a time Mills preserved that conscious silence.

“Why think about it at all?” he murmured coldly at last. “A strange bird is hatched sometimes in a nest in an
unaccountable way and then the fate of such a bird is bound to be ill-defined, uncertain, questionable. And so that is
how Henry Allegre saw her first? And what happened next?”

“What happened next?” repeated Mr. Blunt, with an affected surprise in his tone. “Is it necessary to ask that
question? If you had asked HOW the next happened . . . But as you may imagine she hasn’t told me anything
about that. She didn’t,” he continued with polite sarcasm, “enlarge upon the facts. That confounded Allegre, with his
impudent assumption of princely airs, must have (I shouldn’t wonder) made the fact of his notice appear as a sort of
favour dropped from Olympus. I really can’t tell how the minds and the imaginations of such aunts and uncles are
affected by such rare visitations. Mythology may give us a hint. There is the story of Danae, for instance.”

“There is,” remarked Mills calmly, “but I don’t remember any aunt or uncle in that connection.”

“And there are also certain stories of the discovery and acquisition of some unique objects of art. The sly
approaches, the astute negotiations, the lying and the circumventing . . . for the love of beauty, you
know.”

With his dark face and with the perpetual smiles playing about his grimness, Mr. Blunt appeared to me positively
satanic. Mills’ hand was toying absently with an empty glass. Again they had forgotten my existence altogether.

“I don’t know how an object of art would feel,” went on Blunt, in an unexpectedly grating voice, which, however,
recovered its tone immediately. “I don’t know. But I do know that Rita herself was not a Danae, never, not at any time
of her life. She didn’t mind the holes in her stockings. She wouldn’t mind holes in her stockings now . . .
That is if she manages to keep any stockings at all,” he added, with a sort of suppressed fury so funnily unexpected
that I would have burst into a laugh if I hadn’t been lost in astonishment of the simplest kind.

“No — really!” There was a flash of interest from the quiet Mills.

“Yes, really,” Blunt nodded and knitted his brows very devilishly indeed. “She may yet be left without a single pair
of stockings.”

“He is so subtle.” Blunt remembered my existence for the purpose of that remark and as usual it made me very
uncomfortable. “Perfectly true. A lonely traveller. They are all in the scramble from the lowest to the highest.
Heavens! What a gang! There was even an Archbishop in it.”

“Vous plaisantez,” said Mills, but without any marked show of incredulity.

“I joke very seldom,” Blunt protested earnestly. “That’s why I haven’t mentioned His Majesty — whom God preserve.
That would have been an exaggeration . . . However, the end is not yet. We were talking about the beginning.
I have heard that some dealers in fine objects, quite mercenary people of course (my mother has an experience in that
world), show sometimes an astonishing reluctance to part with some specimens, even at a good price. It must be very
funny. It’s just possible that the uncle and the aunt have been rolling in tears on the floor, amongst their oranges,
or beating their heads against the walls from rage and despair. But I doubt it. And in any case Allegre is not the sort
of person that gets into any vulgar trouble. And it’s just possible that those people stood open-mouthed at all that
magnificence. They weren’t poor, you know; therefore it wasn’t incumbent on them to be honest. They are still there in
the old respectable warehouse, I understand. They have kept their position in their quartier, I believe. But they
didn’t keep their niece. It might have been an act of sacrifice! For I seem to remember hearing that after attending
for a while some school round the corner the child had been set to keep the books of that orange business. However it
might have been, the first fact in Rita’s and Allegre’s common history is a journey to Italy, and then to Corsica. You
know Allegre had a house in Corsica somewhere. She has it now as she has everything he ever had; and that Corsican
palace is the portion that will stick the longest to Dona Rita, I imagine. Who would want to buy a place like that? I
suppose nobody would take it for a gift. The fellow was having houses built all over the place. This very house where
we are sitting belonged to him. Dona Rita has given it to her sister, I understand. Or at any rate the sister runs it.
She is my landlady. . .”

“Her sister here!” I exclaimed. “Her sister!”

Blunt turned to me politely, but only for a long mute gaze. His eyes were in deep shadow and it struck me for the
first time then that there was something fatal in that man’s aspect as soon as he fell silent. I think the effect was
purely physical, but in consequence whatever he said seemed inadequate and as if produced by a commonplace, if uneasy,
soul.

“Dona Rita brought her down from her mountains on purpose. She is asleep somewhere in this house, in one of the
vacant rooms. She lets them, you know, at extortionate prices, that is, if people will pay them, for she is easily
intimidated. You see, she has never seen such an enormous town before in her life, nor yet so many strange people. She
has been keeping house for the uncle-priest in some mountain gorge for years and years. It’s extraordinary he should
have let her go. There is something mysterious there, some reason or other. It’s either theology or Family. The saintly
uncle in his wild parish would know nothing of any other reasons. She wears a rosary at her waist. Directly she had
seen some real money she developed a love of it. If you stay with me long enough, and I hope you will (I really can’t
sleep), you will see her going out to mass at half-past six; but there is nothing remarkable in her; just a peasant
woman of thirty-four or so. A rustic nun . . . .”

I may as well say at once that we didn’t stay as long as that. It was not that morning that I saw for the first time
Therese of the whispering lips and downcast eyes slipping out to an early mass from the house of iniquity into the
early winter murk of the city of perdition, in a world steeped in sin. No. It was not on that morning that I saw Dona
Rita’s incredible sister with her brown, dry face, her gliding motion, and her really nun-like dress, with a black
handkerchief enfolding her head tightly, with the two pointed ends hanging down her back. Yes, nun-like enough. And yet
not altogether. People would have turned round after her if those dartings out to the half-past six mass hadn’t been
the only occasion on which she ventured into the impious streets. She was frightened of the streets, but in a
particular way, not as if of a danger but as if of a contamination. Yet she didn’t fly back to her mountains because at
bottom she had an indomitable character, a peasant tenacity of purpose, predatory instincts . . . .

No, we didn’t remain long enough with Mr. Blunt to see even as much as her back glide out of the house on her
prayerful errand. She was prayerful. She was terrible. Her one-idead peasant mind was as inaccessible as a closed iron
safe. She was fatal . . . It’s perfectly ridiculous to confess that they all seem fatal to me now; but
writing to you like this in all sincerity I don’t mind appearing ridiculous. I suppose fatality must be expressed,
embodied, like other forces of this earth; and if so why not in such people as well as in other more glorious or more
frightful figures?

We remained, however, long enough to let Mr. Blunt’s half-hidden acrimony develop itself or prey on itself in
further talk about the man Allegre and the girl Rita. Mr. Blunt, still addressing Mills with that story, passed on to
what he called the second act, the disclosure, with, what he called, the characteristic Allegre impudence — which
surpassed the impudence of kings, millionaires, or tramps, by many degrees — the revelation of Rita’s existence to the
world at large. It wasn’t a very large world, but then it was most choicely composed. How is one to describe it
shortly? In a sentence it was the world that rides in the morning in the Bois.

In something less than a year and a half from the time he found her sitting on a broken fragment of stone work
buried in the grass of his wild garden, full of thrushes, starlings, and other innocent creatures of the air, he had
given her amongst other accomplishments the art of sitting admirably on a horse, and directly they returned to Paris he
took her out with him for their first morning ride.

“I leave you to judge of the sensation,” continued Mr. Blunt, with a faint grimace, as though the words had an acrid
taste in his mouth. “And the consternation,” he added venomously. “Many of those men on that great morning had some one
of their womankind with them. But their hats had to go off all the same, especially the hats of the fellows who were
under some sort of obligation to Allegre. You would be astonished to hear the names of people, of real personalities in
the world, who, not to mince matters, owed money to Allegre. And I don’t mean in the world of art only. In the first
rout of the surprise some story of an adopted daughter was set abroad hastily, I believe. You know ‘adopted’ with a
peculiar accent on the word — and it was plausible enough. I have been told that at that time she looked extremely
youthful by his side, I mean extremely youthful in expression, in the eyes, in the smile. She must have been. . .”

Blunt pulled himself up short, but not so short as not to let the confused murmur of the word “adorable” reach our
attentive ears.

The heavy Mills made a slight movement in his chair. The effect on me was more inward, a strange emotion which left
me perfectly still; and for the moment of silence Blunt looked more fatal than ever.

“I understand it didn’t last very long,” he addressed us politely again. “And no wonder! The sort of talk she would
have heard during that first springtime in Paris would have put an impress on a much less receptive personality; for of
course Allegre didn’t close his doors to his friends and this new apparition was not of the sort to make them keep
away. After that first morning she always had somebody to ride at her bridle hand. Old Doyen, the sculptor, was the
first to approach them. At that age a man may venture on anything. He rides a strange animal like a circus horse. Rita
had spotted him out of the corner of her eye as he passed them, putting up his enormous paw in a still more enormous
glove, airily, you know, like this” (Blunt waved his hand above his head), “to Allegre. He passes on. All at once he
wheels his fantastic animal round and comes trotting after them. With the merest casual ‘Bonjour, Allegre’ he ranges
close to her on the other side and addresses her, hat in hand, in that booming voice of his like a deferential roar of
the sea very far away. His articulation is not good, and the first words she really made out were ‘I am an old sculptor
. . . Of course there is that habit . . . But I can see you through all that . . . ’

He put his hat on very much on one side. ‘I am a great sculptor of women,’ he declared. ‘I gave up my life to them,
poor unfortunate creatures, the most beautiful, the wealthiest, the most loved . . . Two generations of them
. . . Just look at me full in the eyes, mon enfant.’

“They stared at each other. Dona Rita confessed to me that the old fellow made her heart beat with such force that
she couldn’t manage to smile at him. And she saw his eyes run full of tears. He wiped them simply with the back of his
hand and went on booming faintly. ‘Thought so. You are enough to make one cry. I thought my artist’s life was finished,
and here you come along from devil knows where with this young friend of mine, who isn’t a bad smearer of canvases —
but it’s marble and bronze that you want . . . I shall finish my artist’s life with your face; but I shall
want a bit of those shoulders, too . . . You hear, Allegre, I must have a bit of her shoulders, too. I can
see through the cloth that they are divine. If they aren’t divine I will eat my hat. Yes, I will do your head and then
— nunc dimittis.’

“These were the first words with which the world greeted her, or should I say civilization did; already both her
native mountains and the cavern of oranges belonged to a prehistoric age. ‘Why don’t you ask him to come this
afternoon?’ Allegre’s voice suggested gently. ‘He knows the way to the house.’

“The old man said with extraordinary fervour, ‘Oh, yes I will,’ pulled up his horse and they went on. She told me
that she could feel her heart-beats for a long time. The remote power of that voice, those old eyes full of tears, that
noble and ruined face, had affected her extraordinarily she said. But perhaps what affected her was the shadow, the
still living shadow of a great passion in the man’s heart.

“Allegre remarked to her calmly: ‘He has been a little mad all his life.’”

Chapter 3

Mills lowered the hands holding the extinct and even cold pipe before his big face.

“H’m, shoot an arrow into that old man’s heart like this? But was there anything done?”

“A terra-cotta bust, I believe. Good? I don’t know. I rather think it’s in this house. A lot of things have been
sent down from Paris here, when she gave up the Pavilion. When she goes up now she stays in hotels, you know. I imagine
it is locked up in one of these things,” went on Blunt, pointing towards the end of the studio where amongst the
monumental presses of dark oak lurked the shy dummy which had worn the stiff robes of the Byzantine Empress and the
amazing hat of the “Girl,” rakishly. I wondered whether that dummy had travelled from Paris, too, and whether with or
without its head. Perhaps that head had been left behind, having rolled into a corner of some empty room in the
dismantled Pavilion. I represented it to myself very lonely, without features, like a turnip, with a mere peg sticking
out where the neck should have been. And Mr. Blunt was talking on.

He growled as much as a man of his accomplished manner and voice could growl. “I don’t suppose she gave away all
that to her sister, but I shouldn’t be surprised if that timid rustic didn’t lay a claim to the lot for the love of God
and the good of the Church. . .

“And held on with her teeth, too,” he added graphically.

Mills’ face remained grave. Very grave. I was amused at those little venomous outbreaks of the fatal Mr. Blunt.
Again I knew myself utterly forgotten. But I didn’t feel dull and I didn’t even feel sleepy. That last strikes me as
strange at this distance of time, in regard of my tender years and of the depressing hour which precedes the dawn. We
had been drinking that straw-coloured wine, too, I won’t say like water (nobody would have drunk water like that) but,
well . . . and the haze of tobacco smoke was like the blue mist of great distances seen in dreams.

Yes, that old sculptor was the first who joined them in the sight of all Paris. It was that old glory that opened
the series of companions of those morning rides; a series which extended through three successive Parisian spring-times
and comprised a famous physiologist, a fellow who seemed to hint that mankind could be made immortal or at least
everlastingly old; a fashionable philosopher and psychologist who used to lecture to enormous audiences of women with
his tongue in his cheek (but never permitted himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); that surly dandy
Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity), and everybody else at all distinguished including also a celebrated
person who turned out later to be a swindler. But he was really a genius . . . All this according to Mr.
Blunt, who gave us all those details with a sort of languid zest covering a secret irritation.

“Apart from that, you know,” went on Mr. Blunt, “all she knew of the world of men and women (I mean till Allegre’s
death) was what she had seen of it from the saddle two hours every morning during four months of the year or so.
Absolutely all, with Allegre self-denyingly on her right hand, with that impenetrable air of guardianship. Don’t touch!
He didn’t like his treasures to be touched unless he actually put some unique object into your hands with a sort of
triumphant murmur, ‘Look close at that.’ Of course I only have heard all this. I am much too small a person, you
understand, to even. . .”

He flashed his white teeth at us most agreeably, but the upper part of his face, the shadowed setting of his eyes,
and the slight drawing in of his eyebrows gave a fatal suggestion. I thought suddenly of the definition he applied to
himself: “Americain, catholique et gentil-homme” completed by that startling “I live by my sword” uttered in a light
drawing-room tone tinged by a flavour of mockery lighter even than air.

He insisted to us that the first and only time he had seen Allegre a little close was that morning in the Bois with
his mother. His Majesty (whom God preserve), then not even an active Pretender, flanked the girl, still a girl, on the
other side, the usual companion for a month past or so. Allegre had suddenly taken it into his head to paint his
portrait. A sort of intimacy had sprung up. Mrs. Blunt’s remark was that of the two striking horsemen Allegre looked
the more kingly.

“The son of a confounded millionaire soap-boiler,” commented Mr. Blunt through his clenched teeth. “A man absolutely
without parentage. Without a single relation in the world. Just a freak.”

“That explains why he could leave all his fortune to her,” said Mills.

“The will, I believe,” said Mr. Blunt moodily, “was written on a half sheet of paper, with his device of an Assyrian
bull at the head. What the devil did he mean by it? Anyway it was the last time that she surveyed the world of men and
women from the saddle. Less than three months later. . .”

“Allegre died and . . . “ murmured Mills in an interested manner.

“And she had to dismount,” broke in Mr. Blunt grimly. “Dismount right into the middle of it. Down to the very
ground, you understand. I suppose you can guess what that would mean. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She had
never been on the ground. She . . . ”

“Aha!” said Mills.

“Even eh! eh! if you like,” retorted Mr. Blunt, in an unrefined tone, that made me open my eyes, which were well
opened before, still wider.

He turned to me with that horrible trick of his of commenting upon Mills as though that quiet man whom I admired,
whom I trusted, and for whom I had already something resembling affection had been as much of a dummy as that other one
lurking in the shadows, pitiful and headless in its attitude of alarmed chastity.

“Nothing escapes his penetration. He can perceive a haystack at an enormous distance when he is interested.”

I thought this was going rather too far, even to the borders of vulgarity; but Mills remained untroubled and only
reached for his tobacco pouch.

“But that’s nothing to my mother’s interest. She can never see a haystack, therefore she is always so surprised and
excited. Of course Dona Rita was not a woman about whom the newspapers insert little paragraphs. But Allegre was the
sort of man. A lot came out in print about him and a lot was talked in the world about her; and at once my dear mother
perceived a haystack and naturally became unreasonably absorbed in it. I thought her interest would wear out. But it
didn’t. She had received a shock and had received an impression by means of that girl. My mother has never been treated
with impertinence before, and the aesthetic impression must have been of extraordinary strength. I must suppose that it
amounted to a sort of moral revolution, I can’t account for her proceedings in any other way. When Rita turned up in
Paris a year and a half after Allegre’s death some shabby journalist (smart creature) hit upon the notion of alluding
to her as the heiress of Mr. Allegre. ‘The heiress of Mr. Allegre has taken up her residence again amongst the
treasures of art in that Pavilion so well known to the elite of the artistic, scientific, and political world, not to
speak of the members of aristocratic and even royal families . . . ‘ You know the sort of thing. It appeared
first in the Figaro, I believe. And then at the end a little phrase: ‘She is alone.’ She was in a fair way of becoming
a celebrity of a sort. Daily little allusions and that sort of thing. Heaven only knows who stopped it. There was a
rush of ‘old friends’ into that garden, enough to scare all the little birds away. I suppose one or several of them,
having influence with the press, did it. But the gossip didn’t stop, and the name stuck, too, since it conveyed a very
certain and very significant sort of fact, and of course the Venetian episode was talked about in the houses frequented
by my mother. It was talked about from a royalist point of view with a kind of respect. It was even said that the
inspiration and the resolution of the war going on now over the Pyrenees had come out from that head . . .
Some of them talked as if she were the guardian angel of Legitimacy. You know what royalist gush is like.”

“Well, speaking with all possible respect, it seems to have affected my mother’s brain. I was already with the royal
army and of course there could be no question of regular postal communications with France. My mother hears or
overhears somewhere that the heiress of Mr. Allegre is contemplating a secret journey. All the noble Salons were full
of chatter about that secret naturally. So she sits down and pens an autograph: ‘Madame, Informed that you are
proceeding to the place on which the hopes of all the right thinking people are fixed, I trust to your womanly sympathy
with a mother’s anxious feelings, etc., etc.,’ and ending with a request to take messages to me and bring news of me
. . . The coolness of my mother!”

Most unexpectedly Mills was heard murmuring a question which seemed to me very odd.

“I wonder how your mother addressed that note?”

A moment of silence ensued.

“Hardly in the newspaper style, I should think,” retorted Mr. Blunt, with one of his grins that made me doubt the
stability of his feelings and the consistency of his outlook in regard to his whole tale. “My mother’s maid took it in
a fiacre very late one evening to the Pavilion and brought an answer scrawled on a scrap of paper: ‘Write your messages
at once’ and signed with a big capital R. So my mother sat down again to her charming writing desk and the maid made
another journey in a fiacre just before midnight; and ten days later or so I got a letter thrust into my hand at the
avanzadas just as I was about to start on a night patrol, together with a note asking me to call on the writer so that
she might allay my mother’s anxieties by telling her how I looked.

“It was signed R only, but I guessed at once and nearly fell off my horse with surprise.”

“You mean to say that Dona Rita was actually at the Royal Headquarters lately?” exclaimed Mills, with evident
surprise. “Why, we — everybody — thought that all this affair was over and done with.”

“Absolutely. Nothing in the world could be more done with than that episode. Of course the rooms in the hotel at
Tolosa were retained for her by an order from Royal Headquarters. Two garret-rooms, the place was so full of all sorts
of court people; but I can assure you that for the three days she was there she never put her head outside the door.
General Mongroviejo called on her officially from the King. A general, not anybody of the household, you see. That’s a
distinct shade of the present relation. He stayed just five minutes. Some personage from the Foreign department at
Headquarters was closeted for about a couple of hours. That was of course business. Then two officers from the staff
came together with some explanations or instructions to her. Then Baron H., a fellow with a pretty wife, who had made
so many sacrifices for the cause, raised a great to-do about seeing her and she consented to receive him for a moment.
They say he was very much frightened by her arrival, but after the interview went away all smiles. Who else? Yes, the
Archbishop came. Half an hour. This is more than is necessary to give a blessing, and I can’t conceive what else he had
to give her. But I am sure he got something out of her. Two peasants from the upper valley were sent for by military
authorities and she saw them, too. That friar who hangs about the court has been in and out several times. Well, and
lastly, I myself. I got leave from the outposts. That was the first time I talked to her. I would have gone that
evening back to the regiment, but the friar met me in the corridor and informed me that I would be ordered to escort
that most loyal and noble lady back to the French frontier as a personal mission of the highest honour. I was inclined
to laugh at him. He himself is a cheery and jovial person and he laughed with me quite readily — but I got the order
before dark all right. It was rather a job, as the Alphonsists were attacking the right flank of our whole front and
there was some considerable disorder there. I mounted her on a mule and her maid on another. We spent one night in a
ruined old tower occupied by some of our infantry and got away at daybreak under the Alphonsist shells. The maid nearly
died of fright and one of the troopers with us was wounded. To smuggle her back across the frontier was another job but
it wasn’t my job. It wouldn’t have done for her to appear in sight of French frontier posts in the company of Carlist
uniforms. She seems to have a fearless streak in her nature. At one time as we were climbing a slope absolutely exposed
to artillery fire I asked her on purpose, being provoked by the way she looked about at the scenery, ‘A little emotion,
eh?’ And she answered me in a low voice: ‘Oh, yes! I am moved. I used to run about these hills when I was little.’ And
note, just then the trooper close behind us had been wounded by a shell fragment. He was swearing awfully and fighting
with his horse. The shells were falling around us about two to the minute.

“Luckily the Alphonsist shells are not much better than our own. But women are funny. I was afraid the maid would
jump down and clear out amongst the rocks, in which case we should have had to dismount and catch her. But she didn’t
do that; she sat perfectly still on her mule and shrieked. Just simply shrieked. Ultimately we came to a curiously
shaped rock at the end of a short wooded valley. It was very still there and the sunshine was brilliant. I said to Dona
Rita: ‘We will have to part in a few minutes. I understand that my mission ends at this rock.’ And she said: ‘I know
this rock well. This is my country.’

“Then she thanked me for bringing her there and presently three peasants appeared, waiting for us, two youths and
one shaven old man, with a thin nose like a sword blade and perfectly round eyes, a character well known to the whole
Carlist army. The two youths stopped under the trees at a distance, but the old fellow came quite close up and gazed at
her, screwing up his eyes as if looking at the sun. Then he raised his arm very slowly and took his red boina off his
bald head. I watched her smiling at him all the time. I daresay she knew him as well as she knew the old rock. Very old
rock. The rock of ages — and the aged man — landmarks of her youth. Then the mules started walking smartly forward,
with the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished between the trees. These fellows were most likely sent
out by her uncle the Cura.

“It was a peaceful scene, the morning light, the bit of open country framed in steep stony slopes, a high peak or
two in the distance, the thin smoke of some invisible caserios, rising straight up here and there. Far away behind us
the guns had ceased and the echoes in the gorges had died out. I never knew what peace meant before. . .

“Nor since,” muttered Mr. Blunt after a pause and then went on. “The little stone church of her uncle, the holy man
of the family, might have been round the corner of the next spur of the nearest hill. I dismounted to bandage the
shoulder of my trooper. It was only a nasty long scratch. While I was busy about it a bell began to ring in the
distance. The sound fell deliciously on the ear, clear like the morning light. But it stopped all at once. You know how
a distant bell stops suddenly. I never knew before what stillness meant. While I was wondering at it the fellow holding
our horses was moved to uplift his voice. He was a Spaniard, not a Basque, and he trolled out in Castilian that song
you know,

“‘Oh bells of my native village, I am going away . . . good-bye!’

He had a good voice. When the last note had floated away I remounted, but there was a charm in the spot, something
particular and individual because while we were looking at it before turning our horses’ heads away the singer said: ‘I
wonder what is the name of this place,’ and the other man remarked: ‘Why, there is no village here,’ and the first one
insisted: ‘No, I mean this spot, this very place.’ The wounded trooper decided that it had no name probably. But he was
wrong. It had a name. The hill, or the rock, or the wood, or the whole had a name. I heard of it by chance later. It
was — Lastaola.”

A cloud of tobacco smoke from Mills’ pipe drove between my head and the head of Mr. Blunt, who, strange to say,
yawned slightly. It seemed to me an obvious affectation on the part of that man of perfect manners, and, moreover,
suffering from distressing insomnia.

“This is how we first met and how we first parted,” he said in a weary, indifferent tone. “It’s quite possible that
she did see her uncle on the way. It’s perhaps on this occasion that she got her sister to come out of the wilderness.
I have no doubt she had a pass from the French Government giving her the completest freedom of action. She must have
got it in Paris before leaving.”

Mr. Blunt broke out into worldly, slightly cynical smiles.

“She can get anything she likes in Paris. She could get a whole army over the frontier if she liked. She could get
herself admitted into the Foreign Office at one o’clock in the morning if it so pleased her. Doors fly open before the
heiress of Mr. Allegre. She has inherited the old friends, the old connections . . . Of course, if she were a
toothless old woman . . . But, you see, she isn’t. The ushers in all the ministries bow down to the ground
therefore, and voices from the innermost sanctums take on an eager tone when they say, ‘Faites entrer.’ My mother knows
something about it. She has followed her career with the greatest attention. And Rita herself is not even surprised.
She accomplishes most extraordinary things, as naturally as buying a pair of gloves. People in the shops are very
polite and people in the world are like people in the shops. What did she know of the world? She had seen it only from
the saddle. Oh, she will get your cargo released for you all right. How will she do it? . . Well, when it’s done — you
follow me, Mills? — when it’s done she will hardly know herself.”

“No, she isn’t an idiot,” admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-of-fact voice. “But she confessed to myself only
the other day that she suffered from a sense of unreality. I told her that at any rate she had her own feelings surely.
And she said to me: Yes, there was one of them at least about which she had no doubt; and you will never guess what it
was. Don’t try. I happen to know, because we are pretty good friends.”

At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly. Mills’ staring eyes moved for a glance towards Blunt, I, who
was occupying the divan, raised myself on the cushions a little and Mr. Blunt, with half a turn, put his elbow on the
table.

“I asked her what it was. I don’t see,” went on Mr. Blunt, with a perfectly horrible gentleness, “why I should have
shown particular consideration to the heiress of Mr. Allegre. I don’t mean to that particular mood of hers. It was the
mood of weariness. And so she told me. It’s fear. I will say it once again: Fear . . . .”

He added after a pause, “There can be not the slightest doubt of her courage. But she distinctly uttered the word
fear.”

There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching his legs.

“A person of imagination,” he began, “a young, virgin intelligence, steeped for nearly five years in the talk of
Allegre’s studio, where every hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been worried into shreds. They were like
a lot of intellectual dogs, you know. . .”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Blunt interrupted hastily, “the intellectual personality altogether adrift, a soul without a
home . . . but I, who am neither very fine nor very deep, I am convinced that the fear is material.”

“Because she confessed to it being that?” insinuated Mills.

“No, because she didn’t,” contradicted Blunt, with an angry frown and in an extremely suave voice. “In fact, she bit
her tongue. And considering what good friends we are (under fire together and all that) I conclude that there is
nothing there to boast of. Neither is my friendship, as a matter of fact.”

Mills’ face was the very perfection of indifference. But I who was looking at him, in my innocence, to discover what
it all might mean, I had a notion that it was perhaps a shade too perfect.

“My leave is a farce,” Captain Blunt burst out, with a most unexpected exasperation. “As an officer of Don Carlos, I
have no more standing than a bandit. I ought to have been interned in those filthy old barracks in Avignon a long time
ago . . . Why am I not? Because Dona Rita exists and for no other reason on earth. Of course it’s known that
I am about. She has only to whisper over the wires to the Minister of the Interior, ‘Put that bird in a cage for me,’
and the thing would be done without any more formalities than that . . . Sad world this,” he commented in a
changed tone. “Nowadays a gentleman who lives by his sword is exposed to that sort of thing.”

It was then for the first time I heard Mr. Mills laugh. It was a deep, pleasant, kindly note, not very loud and
altogether free from that quality of derision that spoils so many laughs and gives away the secret hardness of hearts.
But neither was it a very joyous laugh.

“But the truth of the matter is that I am ‘en mission,’” continued Captain Blunt. “I have been instructed to settle
some things, to set other things going, and, by my instructions, Dona Rita is to be the intermediary for all those
objects. And why? Because every bald head in this Republican Government gets pink at the top whenever her dress rustles
outside the door. They bow with immense deference when the door opens, but the bow conceals a smirk because of those
Venetian days. That confounded Versoy shoved his nose into that business; he says accidentally. He saw them together on
the Lido and (those writing fellows are horrible) he wrote what he calls a vignette (I suppose accidentally, too) under
that very title. There was in it a Prince and a lady and a big dog. He described how the Prince on landing from the
gondola emptied his purse into the hands of a picturesque old beggar, while the lady, a little way off, stood gazing
back at Venice with the dog romantically stretched at her feet. One of Versoy’s beautiful prose vignettes in a great
daily that has a literary column. But some other papers that didn’t care a cent for literature rehashed the mere fact.
And that’s the sort of fact that impresses your political man, especially if the lady is, well, such as she is. .
.”

He paused. His dark eyes flashed fatally, away from us, in the direction of the shy dummy; and then he went on with
cultivated cynicism.

“So she rushes down here. Overdone, weary, rest for her nerves. Nonsense. I assure you she has no more nerves than I
have.”

I don’t know how he meant it, but at that moment, slim and elegant, he seemed a mere bundle of nerves himself, with
the flitting expressions on his thin, well-bred face, with the restlessness of his meagre brown hands amongst the
objects on the table. With some pipe ash amongst a little spilt wine his forefinger traced a capital R. Then he looked
into an empty glass profoundly. I have a notion that I sat there staring and listening like a yokel at a play. Mills’
pipe was lying quite a foot away in front of him, empty, cold. Perhaps he had no more tobacco. Mr. Blunt assumed his
dandified air — nervously.

“Of course her movements are commented on in the most exclusive drawing-rooms and also in other places, also
exclusive, but where the gossip takes on another tone. There they are probably saying that she has got a ‘coup de
coeur’ for some one. Whereas I think she is utterly incapable of that sort of thing. That Venetian affair, the
beginning of it and the end of it, was nothing but a coup de tete, and all those activities in which I am involved, as
you see (by order of Headquarters, ha, ha, ha!), are nothing but that, all this connection, all this intimacy into
which I have dropped . . . Not to speak of my mother, who is delightful, but as irresponsible as one of those
crazy princesses that shock their Royal families . . . ”

He seemed to bite his tongue and I observed that Mills’ eyes seemed to have grown wider than I had ever seen them
before. In that tranquil face it was a great play of feature. “An intimacy,” began Mr. Blunt, with an extremely refined
grimness of tone, “an intimacy with the heiress of Mr. Allegre on the part of . . . on my part, well, it
isn’t exactly . . . it’s open . . . well, I leave it to you, what does it look like?”

“Not actually, perhaps, at this moment. But I don’t need to tell a man of the world, like you, that such things
cannot remain unseen. And that they are, well, compromising, because of the mere fact of the fortune.”

Mills got on his feet, looked for his jacket and after getting into it made himself heard while he looked for his
hat.

“Whereas the woman herself is, so to speak, priceless.”

Mr. Blunt muttered the word “Obviously.”

By then we were all on our feet. The iron stove glowed no longer and the lamp, surrounded by empty bottles and empty
glasses, had grown dimmer.

I know that I had a great shiver on getting away from the cushions of the divan.

“We will meet again in a few hours,” said Mr. Blunt.

“Don’t forget to come,” he said, addressing me. “Oh, yes, do. Have no scruples. I am authorized to make
invitations.”

He must have noticed my shyness, my surprise, my embarrassment. And indeed I didn’t know what to say.

“I assure you there isn’t anything incorrect in your coming,” he insisted, with the greatest civility. “You will be
introduced by two good friends, Mills and myself. Surely you are not afraid of a very charming woman . . .
.”

I was not afraid, but my head swam a little and I only looked at him mutely.

“Lunch precisely at midday. Mills will bring you along. I am sorry you two are going. I shall throw myself on the
bed for an hour or two, but I am sure I won’t sleep.”

He accompanied us along the passage into the black-and-white hall, where the low gas flame glimmered forlornly. When
he opened the front door the cold blast of the mistral rushing down the street of the Consuls made me shiver to the
very marrow of my bones.

Mills and I exchanged but a few words as we walked down towards the centre of the town. In the chill tempestuous
dawn he strolled along musingly, disregarding the discomfort of the cold, the depressing influence of the hour, the
desolation of the empty streets in which the dry dust rose in whirls in front of us, behind us, flew upon us from the
side streets. The masks had gone home and our footsteps echoed on the flagstones with unequal sound as of men without
purpose, without hope.

“I suppose you will come,” said Mills suddenly.

“I really don’t know,” I said.

“Don’t you? Well, remember I am not trying to persuade you; but I am staying at the Hotel de Louvre and I shall
leave there at a quarter to twelve for that lunch. At a quarter to twelve, not a minute later. I suppose you can
sleep?”

I laughed.

“Charming age, yours,” said Mills, as we came out on the quays. Already dim figures of the workers moved in the
biting dawn and the masted forms of ships were coming out dimly, as far as the eye could reach down the old
harbour.

“Well,” Mills began again, “you may oversleep yourself.”

This suggestion was made in a cheerful tone, just as we shook hands at the lower end of the Cannebiere. He looked
very burly as he walked away from me. I went on towards my lodgings. My head was very full of confused images, but I
was really too tired to think.

PART TWO

Chapter 1

Sometimes I wonder yet whether Mills wished me to oversleep myself or not: that is, whether he
really took sufficient interest to care. His uniform kindliness of manner made it impossible for me to tell. And I can
hardly remember my own feelings. Did I care? The whole recollection of that time of my life has such a peculiar quality
that the beginning and the end of it are merged in one sensation of profound emotion, continuous and overpowering,
containing the extremes of exultation, full of careless joy and of an invincible sadness — like a day-dream. The sense
of all this having been gone through as if in one great rush of imagination is all the stronger in the distance of
time, because it had something of that quality even then: of fate unprovoked, of events that didn’t cast any shadow
before.

Not that those events were in the least extraordinary. They were, in truth, commonplace. What to my backward glance
seems startling and a little awful is their punctualness and inevitability. Mills was punctual. Exactly at a quarter to
twelve he appeared under the lofty portal of the Hotel de Louvre, with his fresh face, his ill-fitting grey suit, and
enveloped in his own sympathetic atmosphere.

How could I have avoided him? To this day I have a shadowy conviction of his inherent distinction of mind and heart,
far beyond any man I have ever met since. He was unavoidable: and of course I never tried to avoid him. The first sight
on which his eyes fell was a victoria pulled up before the hotel door, in which I sat with no sentiment I can remember
now but that of some slight shyness. He got in without a moment’s hesitation, his friendly glance took me in from head
to foot and (such was his peculiar gift) gave me a pleasurable sensation.

After we had gone a little way I couldn’t help saying to him with a bashful laugh: “You know, it seems very
extraordinary that I should be driving out with you like this.”

He turned to look at me and in his kind voice:

“You will find everything extremely simple,” he said. “So simple that you will be quite able to hold your own. I
suppose you know that the world is selfish, I mean the majority of the people in it, often unconsciously I must admit,
and especially people with a mission, with a fixed idea, with some fantastic object in view, or even with only some
fantastic illusion. That doesn’t mean that they have no scruples. And I don’t know that at this moment I myself am not
one of them.”

“That, of course, I can’t say,” I retorted.

“I haven’t seen her for years,” he said, “and in comparison with what she was then she must be very grown up by now.
From what we heard from Mr. Blunt she had experiences which would have matured her more than they would teach her.
There are of course people that are not teachable. I don’t know that she is one of them. But as to maturity that’s
quite another thing. Capacity for suffering is developed in every human being worthy of the name.”

“Captain Blunt doesn’t seem to be a very happy person,” I said. “He seems to have a grudge against everybody. People
make him wince. The things they do, the things they say. He must be awfully mature.”

Mills gave me a sidelong look. It met mine of the same character and we both smiled without openly looking at each
other. At the end of the Rue de Rome the violent chilly breath of the mistral enveloped the victoria in a great
widening of brilliant sunshine without heat. We turned to the right, circling at a stately pace about the rather mean
obelisk which stands at the entrance to the Prado.

“I don’t know whether you are mature or not,” said Mills humorously. “But I think you will do. You . . .
”

And I nodded at the alley of the Prado opening before us between the rows of the perfectly leafless trees.

“Thoroughly false, I should think. It doesn’t accord either with his illusions or his pretensions, or even with the
real position he has in the world. And so what between his mother and the General Headquarters and the state of his own
feelings he . . . ”

“He is in love with her,” I interrupted again.

“That wouldn’t make it any easier. I’m not at all sure of that. But if so it can’t be a very idealistic sentiment.
All the warmth of his idealism is concentrated upon a certain ‘Americain, Catholique et gentil-homme . . .
‘”

The smile which for a moment dwelt on his lips was not unkind.

“At the same time he has a very good grip of the material conditions that surround, as it were, the situation.”

“What do you mean? That Dona Rita” (the name came strangely familiar to my tongue) “is rich, that she has a fortune
of her own?”

“Yes, a fortune,” said Mills. “But it was Allegre’s fortune before . . . And then there is Blunt’s
fortune: he lives by his sword. And there is the fortune of his mother, I assure you a perfectly charming, clever, and
most aristocratic old lady, with the most distinguished connections. I really mean it. She doesn’t live by her sword.
She . . . she lives by her wits. I have a notion that those two dislike each other heartily at times
. . . Here we are.”

The victoria stopped in the side alley, bordered by the low walls of private grounds. We got out before a
wrought-iron gateway which stood half open and walked up a circular drive to the door of a large villa of a neglected
appearance. The mistral howled in the sunshine, shaking the bare bushes quite furiously. And everything was bright and
hard, the air was hard, the light was hard, the ground under our feet was hard.

The door at which Mills rang came open almost at once. The maid who opened it was short, dark, and slightly
pockmarked. For the rest, an obvious “femme-de-chambre,” and very busy. She said quickly, “Madame has just returned
from her ride,” and went up the stairs leaving us to shut the front door ourselves.

The staircase had a crimson carpet. Mr. Blunt appeared from somewhere in the hall. He was in riding breeches and a
black coat with ample square skirts. This get-up suited him but it also changed him extremely by doing away with the
effect of flexible slimness he produced in his evening clothes. He looked to me not at all himself but rather like a
brother of the man who had been talking to us the night before. He carried about him a delicate perfume of scented
soap. He gave us a flash of his white teeth and said:

“It’s a perfect nuisance. We have just dismounted. I will have to lunch as I am. A lifelong habit of beginning her
day on horseback. She pretends she is unwell unless she does. I daresay, when one thinks there has been hardly a day
for five or six years that she didn’t begin with a ride. That’s the reason she is always rushing away from Paris where
she can’t go out in the morning alone. Here, of course, it’s different. And as I, too, am a stranger here I can go out
with her. Not that I particularly care to do it.”

These last words were addressed to Mills specially, with the addition of a mumbled remark: “It’s a confounded
position.” Then calmly to me with a swift smile: “We have been talking of you this morning. You are expected with
impatience.”

“Thank you very much,” I said, “but I can’t help asking myself what I am doing here.”

The upward cast in the eyes of Mills who was facing the staircase made us both, Blunt and I, turn round. The woman
of whom I had heard so much, in a sort of way in which I had never heard a woman spoken of before, was coming down the
stairs, and my first sensation was that of profound astonishment at this evidence that she did really exist. And even
then the visual impression was more of colour in a picture than of the forms of actual life. She was wearing a wrapper,
a sort of dressing-gown of pale blue silk embroidered with black and gold designs round the neck and down the front,
lapped round her and held together by a broad belt of the same material. Her slippers were of the same colour, with
black bows at the instep. The white stairs, the deep crimson of the carpet, and the light blue of the dress made an
effective combination of colour to set off the delicate carnation of that face, which, after the first glance given to
the whole person, drew irresistibly your gaze to itself by an indefinable quality of charm beyond all analysis and made
you think of remote races, of strange generations, of the faces of women sculptured on immemorial monuments and of
those lying unsung in their tombs. While she moved downwards from step to step with slightly lowered eyes there flashed
upon me suddenly the recollection of words heard at night, of Allegre’s words about her, of there being in her
“something of the women of all time.”

At the last step she raised her eyelids, treated us to an exhibition of teeth as dazzling as Mr. Blunt’s and looking
even stronger; and indeed, as she approached us she brought home to our hearts (but after all I am speaking only for
myself) a vivid sense of her physical perfection in beauty of limb and balance of nerves, and not so much of grace,
probably, as of absolute harmony.

She said to us, “I am sorry I kept you waiting.” Her voice was low pitched, penetrating, and of the most seductive
gentleness. She offered her hand to Mills very frankly as to an old friend. Within the extraordinarily wide sleeve,
lined with black silk, I could see the arm, very white, with a pearly gleam in the shadow. But to me she extended her
hand with a slight stiffening, as it were a recoil of her person, combined with an extremely straight glance. It was a
finely shaped, capable hand. I bowed over it, and we just touched fingers. I did not look then at her face.

Next moment she caught sight of some envelopes lying on the round marble-topped table in the middle of the hall. She
seized one of them with a wonderfully quick, almost feline, movement and tore it open, saying to us, “Excuse me, I must
. . . Do go into the dining-room. Captain Blunt, show the way.”

Her widened eyes stared at the paper. Mr. Blunt threw one of the doors open, but before we passed through it we
heard a petulant exclamation accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet and ending in a laugh which had in it a
note of contempt.

The door closed behind us; we had been abandoned by Mr. Blunt. He had remained on the other side, possibly to
soothe. The room in which we found ourselves was long like a gallery and ended in a rotunda with many windows. It was
long enough for two fireplaces of red polished granite. A table laid out for four occupied very little space. The floor
inlaid in two kinds of wood in a bizarre pattern was highly waxed, reflecting objects like still water.

Before very long Dona Rita and Blunt rejoined us and we sat down around the table; but before we could begin to talk
a dramatically sudden ring at the front door stilled our incipient animation. Dona Rita looked at us all in turn, with
surprise and, as it were, with suspicion. “How did he know I was here?” she whispered after looking at the card which
was brought to her. She passed it to Blunt, who passed it to Mills, who made a faint grimace, dropped it on the
table-cloth, and only whispered to me, “A journalist from Paris.”

“He has run me to earth,” said Dona Rita. “One would bargain for peace against hard cash if these fellows weren’t
always ready to snatch at one’s very soul with the other hand. It frightens me.”

Her voice floated mysterious and penetrating from her lips, which moved very little. Mills was watching her with
sympathetic curiosity. Mr. Blunt muttered: “Better not make the brute angry.” For a moment Dona Rita’s face, with its
narrow eyes, its wide brow, and high cheek bones, became very still; then her colour was a little heightened. “Oh,” she
said softly, “let him come in. He would be really dangerous if he had a mind — you know,” she said to Mills.

The person who had provoked all those remarks and as much hesitation as though he had been some sort of wild beast
astonished me on being admitted, first by the beauty of his white head of hair and then by his paternal aspect and the
innocent simplicity of his manner. They laid a cover for him between Mills and Dona Rita, who quite openly removed the
envelopes she had brought with her, to the other side of her plate. As openly the man’s round china-blue eyes followed
them in an attempt to make out the handwriting of the addresses.

He seemed to know, at least slightly, both Mills and Blunt. To me he gave a stare of stupid surprise. He addressed
our hostess.

“Resting? Rest is a very good thing. Upon my word, I thought I would find you alone. But you have too much sense.
Neither man nor woman has been created to live alone . . . .” After this opening he had all the talk to
himself. It was left to him pointedly, and I verily believe that I was the only one who showed an appearance of
interest. I couldn’t help it. The others, including Mills, sat like a lot of deaf and dumb people. No. It was even
something more detached. They sat rather like a very superior lot of waxworks, with the fixed but indetermined facial
expression and with that odd air wax figures have of being aware of their existence being but a sham.

I was the exception; and nothing could have marked better my status of a stranger, the completest possible stranger
in the moral region in which those people lived, moved, enjoying or suffering their incomprehensible emotions. I was as
much of a stranger as the most hopeless castaway stumbling in the dark upon a hut of natives and finding them in the
grip of some situation appertaining to the mentalities, prejudices, and problems of an undiscovered country — of a
country of which he had not even had one single clear glimpse before.

It was even worse in a way. It ought to have been more disconcerting. For, pursuing the image of the cast-away
blundering upon the complications of an unknown scheme of life, it was I, the castaway, who was the savage, the simple
innocent child of nature. Those people were obviously more civilized than I was. They had more rites, more ceremonies,
more complexity in their sensations, more knowledge of evil, more varied meanings to the subtle phrases of their
language. Naturally! I was still so young! And yet I assure you, that just then I lost all sense of inferiority. And
why? Of course the carelessness and the ignorance of youth had something to do with that. But there was something else
besides. Looking at Dona Rita, her head leaning on her hand, with her dark lashes lowered on the slightly flushed
cheek, I felt no longer alone in my youth. That woman of whom I had heard these things I have set down with all the
exactness of unfailing memory, that woman was revealed to me young, younger than anybody I had ever seen, as young as
myself (and my sensation of my youth was then very acute); revealed with something peculiarly intimate in the
conviction, as if she were young exactly in the same way in which I felt myself young; and that therefore no
misunderstanding between us was possible and there could be nothing more for us to know about each other. Of course
this sensation was momentary, but it was illuminating; it was a light which could not last, but it left no darkness
behind. On the contrary, it seemed to have kindled magically somewhere within me a glow of assurance, of unaccountable
confidence in myself: a warm, steady, and eager sensation of my individual life beginning for good there, on that spot,
in that sense of solidarity, in that seduction.

Chapter 2

For this, properly speaking wonderful, reason I was the only one of the company who could listen
without constraint to the unbidden guest with that fine head of white hair, so beautifully kept, so magnificently
waved, so artistically arranged that respect could not be felt for it any more than for a very expensive wig in the
window of a hair-dresser. In fact, I had an inclination to smile at it. This proves how unconstrained I felt. My mind
was perfectly at liberty; and so of all the eyes in that room mine was the only pair able to look about in easy
freedom. All the other listeners’ eyes were cast down, including Mills’ eyes, but that I am sure was only because of
his perfect and delicate sympathy. He could not have been concerned otherwise.

The intruder devoured the cutlets — if they were cutlets. Notwithstanding my perfect liberty of mind I was not aware
of what we were eating. I have a notion that the lunch was a mere show, except of course for the man with the white
hair, who was really hungry and who, besides, must have had the pleasant sense of dominating the situation. He stooped
over his plate and worked his jaw deliberately while his blue eyes rolled incessantly; but as a matter of fact he never
looked openly at any one of us. Whenever he laid down his knife and fork he would throw himself back and start
retailing in a light tone some Parisian gossip about prominent people.

He talked first about a certain politician of mark. His “dear Rita” knew him. His costume dated back to ‘48, he was
made of wood and parchment and still swathed his neck in a white cloth; and even his wife had never been seen in a
low-necked dress. Not once in her life. She was buttoned up to the chin like her husband. Well, that man had confessed
to him that when he was engaged in political controversy, not on a matter of principle but on some special measure in
debate, he felt ready to kill everybody.

He interrupted himself for a comment. “I am something like that myself. I believe it’s a purely professional
feeling. Carry one’s point whatever it is. Normally I couldn’t kill a fly. My sensibility is too acute for that. My
heart is too tender also. Much too tender. I am a Republican. I am a Red. As to all our present masters and governors,
all those people you are trying to turn round your little finger, they are all horrible Royalists in disguise. They are
plotting the ruin of all the institutions to which I am devoted. But I have never tried to spoil your little game,
Rita. After all, it’s but a little game. You know very well that two or three fearless articles, something in my style,
you know, would soon put a stop to all that underhand backing of your king. I am calling him king because I want to be
polite to you. He is an adventurer, a blood-thirsty, murderous adventurer, for me, and nothing else. Look here, my dear
child, what are you knocking yourself about for? For the sake of that bandit? Allons donc! A pupil of Henry Allegre can
have no illusions of that sort about any man. And such a pupil, too! Ah, the good old days in the Pavilion! Don’t think
I claim any particular intimacy. It was just enough to enable me to offer my services to you, Rita, when our poor
friend died. I found myself handy and so I came. It so happened that I was the first. You remember, Rita? What made it
possible for everybody to get on with our poor dear Allegre was his complete, equable, and impartial contempt for all
mankind. There is nothing in that against the purest democratic principles; but that you, Rita, should elect to throw
so much of your life away for the sake of a Royal adventurer, it really knocks me over. For you don’t love him. You
never loved him, you know.”

He made a snatch at her hand, absolutely pulled it away from under her head (it was quite startling) and retaining
it in his grasp, proceeded to a paternal patting of the most impudent kind. She let him go on with apparent
insensibility. Meanwhile his eyes strayed round the table over our faces. It was very trying. The stupidity of that
wandering stare had a paralysing power. He talked at large with husky familiarity.

“Here I come, expecting to find a good sensible girl who had seen at last the vanity of all those things; half-light
in the rooms; surrounded by the works of her favourite poets, and all that sort of thing. I say to myself: I must just
run in and see the dear wise child, and encourage her in her good resolutions . . . And I fall into the
middle of an intime lunch-party. For I suppose it is intime. Eh? Very? H’m, yes . . . ”

He was really appalling. Again his wandering stare went round the table, with an expression incredibly incongruous
with the words. It was as though he had borrowed those eyes from some idiot for the purpose of that visit. He still
held Dona Rita’s hand, and, now and then, patted it.

“It’s discouraging,” he cooed. “And I believe not one of you here is a Frenchman. I don’t know what you are all
about. It’s beyond me. But if we were a Republic — you know I am an old Jacobin, sans-culotte and terrorist — if this
were a real Republic with the Convention sitting and a Committee of Public Safety attending to national business, you
would all get your heads cut off. Ha, ha . . . I am joking, ha, ha! . . . and serve you right, too.
Don’t mind my little joke.”

While he was still laughing he released her hand and she leaned her head on it again without haste. She had never
looked at him once.

During the rather humiliating silence that ensued he got a leather cigar case like a small valise out of his pocket,
opened it and looked with critical interest at the six cigars it contained. The tireless femme-de-chambre set down a
tray with coffee cups on the table. We each (glad, I suppose, of something to do) took one, but he, to begin with,
sniffed at his. Dona Rita continued leaning on her elbow, her lips closed in a reposeful expression of peculiar
sweetness. There was nothing drooping in her attitude. Her face with the delicate carnation of a rose and downcast eyes
was as if veiled in firm immobility and was so appealing that I had an insane impulse to walk round and kiss the
forearm on which it was leaning; that strong, well-shaped forearm, gleaming not like marble but with a living and warm
splendour. So familiar had I become already with her in my thoughts! Of course I didn’t do anything of the sort. It was
nothing uncontrollable, it was but a tender longing of a most respectful and purely sentimental kind. I performed the
act in my thought quietly, almost solemnly, while the creature with the silver hair leaned back in his chair, puffing
at his cigar, and began to speak again.

It was all apparently very innocent talk. He informed his “dear Rita” that he was really on his way to Monte Carlo.
A lifelong habit of his at this time of the year; but he was ready to run back to Paris if he could do anything for his
“chere enfant,” run back for a day, for two days, for three days, for any time; miss Monte Carlo this year altogether,
if he could be of the slightest use and save her going herself. For instance he could see to it that proper watch was
kept over the Pavilion stuffed with all these art treasures. What was going to happen to all those things?
. . . Making herself heard for the first time Dona Rita murmured without moving that she had made
arrangements with the police to have it properly watched. And I was enchanted by the almost imperceptible play of her
lips.

But the anxious creature was not reassured. He pointed out that things had been stolen out of the Louvre, which was,
he dared say, even better watched. And there was that marvellous cabinet on the landing, black lacquer with silver
herons, which alone would repay a couple of burglars. A wheelbarrow, some old sacking, and they could trundle it off
under people’s noses.

“Have you thought it all out?” she asked in a cold whisper, while we three sat smoking to give ourselves a
countenance (it was certainly no enjoyment) and wondering what we would hear next.

No, he had not. But he confessed that for years and years he had been in love with that cabinet. And anyhow what was
going to happen to the things? The world was greatly exercised by that problem. He turned slightly his beautifully
groomed white head so as to address Mr. Blunt directly.

“I had the pleasure of meeting your mother lately.”

Mr. Blunt took his time to raise his eyebrows and flash his teeth at him before he dropped negligently, “I can’t
imagine where you could have met my mother.”

“Why, at Bing’s, the curio-dealer,” said the other with an air of the heaviest possible stupidity. And yet there was
something in these few words which seemed to imply that if Mr. Blunt was looking for trouble he would certainly get it.
“Bing was bowing her out of his shop, but he was so angry about something that he was quite rude even to me afterwards.
I don’t think it’s very good for Madame votre mere to quarrel with Bing. He is a Parisian personality. He’s quite a
power in his sphere. All these fellows’ nerves are upset from worry as to what will happen to the Allegre collection.
And no wonder they are nervous. A big art event hangs on your lips, my dear, great Rita. And by the way, you too ought
to remember that it isn’t wise to quarrel with people. What have you done to that poor Azzolati? Did you really tell
him to get out and never come near you again, or something awful like that? I don’t doubt that he was of use to you or
to your king. A man who gets invitations to shoot with the President at Rambouillet! I saw him only the other evening;
I heard he had been winning immensely at cards; but he looked perfectly wretched, the poor fellow. He complained of
your conduct — oh, very much! He told me you had been perfectly brutal with him. He said to me: ‘I am no good for
anything, mon cher. The other day at Rambouillet, whenever I had a hare at the end of my gun I would think of her cruel
words and my eyes would run full of tears. I missed every shot’ . . . You are not fit for diplomatic work,
you know, ma chere. You are a mere child at it. When you want a middle-aged gentleman to do anything for you, you don’t
begin by reducing him to tears. I should have thought any woman would have known that much. A nun would have known that
much. What do you say? Shall I run back to Paris and make it up for you with Azzolati?”

He waited for her answer. The compression of his thin lips was full of significance. I was surprised to see our
hostess shake her head negatively the least bit, for indeed by her pose, by the thoughtful immobility of her face she
seemed to be a thousand miles away from us all, lost in an infinite reverie.

He gave it up. “Well, I must be off. The express for Nice passes at four o’clock. I will be away about three weeks
and then you shall see me again. Unless I strike a run of bad luck and get cleaned out, in which case you shall see me
before then.”

He turned to Mills suddenly.

“Will your cousin come south this year, to that beautiful villa of his at Cannes?”

Mills hardly deigned to answer that he didn’t know anything about his cousin’s movements.

“A grand seigneur combined with a great connoisseur,” opined the other heavily. His mouth had gone slack and he
looked a perfect and grotesque imbecile under his wig-like crop of white hair. Positively I thought he would begin to
slobber. But he attacked Blunt next.

“Are you on your way down, too? A little flutter . . . It seems to me you haven’t been seen in your usual
Paris haunts of late. Where have you been all this time?”

“Don’t you know where I have been?” said Mr. Blunt with great precision.

“No, I only ferret out things that may be of some use to me,” was the unexpected reply, uttered with an air of
perfect vacancy and swallowed by Mr. Blunt in blank silence.

At last he made ready to rise from the table. “Think over what I have said, my dear Rita.”

“It’s all over and done with,” was Dona Rita’s answer, in a louder tone than I had ever heard her use before. It
thrilled me while she continued: “I mean, this thinking.” She was back from the remoteness of her meditation, very much
so indeed. She rose and moved away from the table, inviting by a sign the other to follow her; which he did at once,
yet slowly and as it were warily.

It was a conference in the recess of a window. We three remained seated round the table from which the dark maid was
removing the cups and the plates with brusque movements. I gazed frankly at Dona Rita’s profile, irregular, animated,
and fascinating in an undefinable way, at her well-shaped head with the hair twisted high up and apparently held in its
place by a gold arrow with a jewelled shaft. We couldn’t hear what she said, but the movement of her lips and the play
of her features were full of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity and gentleness. She spoke with fire
without raising her voice. The man listened round-shouldered, but seeming much too stupid to understand. I could see
now and then that he was speaking, but he was inaudible. At one moment Dona Rita turned her head to the room and called
out to the maid, “Give me my hand-bag off the sofa.”

At this the other was heard plainly, “No, no,” and then a little lower, “You have no tact, Rita . . . .”
Then came her argument in a low, penetrating voice which I caught, “Why not? Between such old friends.” However, she
waved away the hand-bag, he calmed down, and their voices sank again. Presently I saw him raise her hand to his lips,
while with her back to the room she continued to contemplate out of the window the bare and untidy garden. At last he
went out of the room, throwing to the table an airy “Bonjour, bonjour,” which was not acknowledged by any of us
three.

Chapter 3

Mills got up and approached the figure at the window. To my extreme surprise, Mr. Blunt, after a
moment of obviously painful hesitation, hastened out after the man with the white hair.

In consequence of these movements I was left to myself and I began to be uncomfortably conscious of it when Dona
Rita, near the window, addressed me in a raised voice.

“We have no confidences to exchange, Mr. Mills and I.”

I took this for an encouragement to join them. They were both looking at me. Dona Rita added, “Mr. Mills and I are
friends from old times, you know.”

Bathed in the softened reflection of the sunshine, which did not fall directly into the room, standing very straight
with her arms down, before Mills, and with a faint smile directed to me, she looked extremely young, and yet mature.
There was even, for a moment, a slight dimple in her cheek.

“How old, I wonder?” I said, with an answering smile.

“Oh, for ages, for ages,” she exclaimed hastily, frowning a little, then she went on addressing herself to Mills,
apparently in continuation of what she was saying before.

. . . “This man’s is an extreme case, and yet perhaps it isn’t the worst. But that’s the sort of thing. I
have no account to render to anybody, but I don’t want to be dragged along all the gutters where that man picks up his
living.”

She had thrown her head back a little but there was no scorn, no angry flash under the dark-lashed eyelids. The
words did not ring. I was struck for the first time by the even, mysterious quality of her voice.

“Will you let me suggest,” said Mills, with a grave, kindly face, “that being what you are, you have nothing to
fear?”

“And perhaps nothing to lose,” she went on without bitterness. “No. It isn’t fear. It’s a sort of dread. You must
remember that no nun could have had a more protected life. Henry Allegre had his greatness. When he faced the world he
also masked it. He was big enough for that. He filled the whole field of vision for me.”

“You found that enough?” asked Mills.

“Why ask now?” she remonstrated. “The truth — the truth is that I never asked myself. Enough or not there was no
room for anything else. He was the shadow and the light and the form and the voice. He would have it so. The morning he
died they came to call me at four o’clock. I ran into his room bare-footed. He recognized me and whispered, ‘You are
flawless.’ I was very frightened. He seemed to think, and then said very plainly, ‘Such is my character. I am like
that.’ These were the last words he spoke. I hardly noticed them then. I was thinking that he was lying in a very
uncomfortable position and I asked him if I should lift him up a little higher on the pillows. You know I am very
strong. I could have done it. I had done it before. He raised his hand off the blanket just enough to make a sign that
he didn’t want to be touched. It was the last gesture he made. I hung over him and then — and then I nearly ran out of
the house just as I was, in my night-gown. I think if I had been dressed I would have run out of the garden, into the
street — run away altogether. I had never seen death. I may say I had never heard of it. I wanted to run from it.”

She paused for a long, quiet breath. The harmonized sweetness and daring of her face was made pathetic by her
downcast eyes.

“Fuir la mort,” she repeated, meditatively, in her mysterious voice.

Mills’ big head had a little movement, nothing more. Her glance glided for a moment towards me like a friendly
recognition of my right to be there, before she began again.

“My life might have been described as looking at mankind from a fourth-floor window for years. When the end came it
was like falling out of a balcony into the street. It was as sudden as that. Once I remember somebody was telling us in
the Pavilion a tale about a girl who jumped down from a fourth-floor window . . . For love, I believe,” she
interjected very quickly, “and came to no harm. Her guardian angel must have slipped his wings under her just in time.
He must have. But as to me, all I know is that I didn’t break anything — not even my heart. Don’t be shocked, Mr.
Mills. It’s very likely that you don’t understand.”

“Henry Allegre had the highest opinion of your intelligence,” she said unexpectedly and with evident seriousness.
“But all this is only to tell you that when he was gone I found myself down there unhurt, but dazed, bewildered, not
sufficiently stunned. It so happened that that creature was somewhere in the neighbourhood. How he found out
. . . But it’s his business to find out things. And he knows, too, how to worm his way in anywhere. Indeed,
in the first days he was useful and somehow he made it look as if Heaven itself had sent him. In my distress I thought
I could never sufficiently repay . . . Well, I have been paying ever since.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mills softly. “In hard cash?”

“Oh, it’s really so little,” she said. “I told you it wasn’t the worst case. I stayed on in that house from which I
nearly ran away in my nightgown. I stayed on because I didn’t know what to do next. He vanished as he had come on the
track of something else, I suppose. You know he really has got to get his living some way or other. But don’t think I
was deserted. On the contrary. People were coming and going, all sorts of people that Henry Allegre used to know — or
had refused to know. I had a sensation of plotting and intriguing around me, all the time. I was feeling morally
bruised, sore all over, when, one day, Don Rafael de Villarel sent in his card. A grandee. I didn’t know him, but, as
you are aware, there was hardly a personality of mark or position that hasn’t been talked about in the Pavilion before
me. Of him I had only heard that he was a very austere and pious person, always at Mass, and that sort of thing. I saw
a frail little man with a long, yellow face and sunken fanatical eyes, an Inquisitor, an unfrocked monk. One missed a
rosary from his thin fingers. He gazed at me terribly and I couldn’t imagine what he might want. I waited for him to
pull out a crucifix and sentence me to the stake there and then. But no; he dropped his eyes and in a cold, righteous
sort of voice informed me that he had called on behalf of the prince — he called him His Majesty. I was amazed by the
change. I wondered now why he didn’t slip his hands into the sleeves of his coat, you know, as begging Friars do when
they come for a subscription. He explained that the Prince asked for permission to call and offer me his condolences in
person. We had seen a lot of him our last two months in Paris that year. Henry Allegre had taken a fancy to paint his
portrait. He used to ride with us nearly every morning. Almost without thinking I said I should be pleased. Don Rafael
was shocked at my want of formality, but bowed to me in silence, very much as a monk bows, from the waist. If he had
only crossed his hands flat on his chest it would have been perfect. Then, I don’t know why, something moved me to make
him a deep curtsy as he backed out of the room, leaving me suddenly impressed, not only with him but with myself too. I
had my door closed to everybody else that afternoon and the Prince came with a very proper sorrowful face, but five
minutes after he got into the room he was laughing as usual, made the whole little house ring with it. You know his
big, irresistible laugh . . . .”

“No,” said Mills, a little abruptly, “I have never seen him.”

“No,” she said, surprised, “and yet you . . . ”

“I understand,” interrupted Mills. “All this is purely accidental. You must know that I am a solitary man of books
but with a secret taste for adventure which somehow came out; surprising even me.”

She listened with that enigmatic, still, under the eyelids glance, and a friendly turn of the head.

“Listen, I don’t need to justify myself, but if I had known a single woman in the world, if I had only had the
opportunity to observe a single one of them, I would have been perhaps on my guard. But you know I hadn’t. The only
woman I had anything to do with was myself, and they say that one can’t know oneself. It never entered my head to be on
my guard against his warmth and his terrible obviousness. You and he were the only two, infinitely different, people,
who didn’t approach me as if I had been a precious object in a collection, an ivory carving or a piece of Chinese
porcelain. That’s why I have kept you in my memory so well. Oh! you were not obvious! As to him — I soon learned to
regret I was not some object, some beautiful, carved object of bone or bronze; a rare piece of porcelain, pate dure,
not pate tendre. A pretty specimen.”

“Rare, yes. Even unique,” said Mills, looking at her steadily with a smile. “But don’t try to depreciate yourself.
You were never pretty. You are not pretty. You are worse.”

Her narrow eyes had a mischievous gleam. “Do you find such sayings in your books?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact I have,” said Mills, with a little laugh, “found this one in a book. It was a woman who said
that of herself. A woman far from common, who died some few years ago. She was an actress. A great artist.”

“A great! . . . Lucky person! She had that refuge, that garment, while I stand here with nothing to
protect me from evil fame; a naked temperament for any wind to blow upon. Yes, greatness in art is a protection. I
wonder if there would have been anything in me if I had tried? But Henry Allegre would never let me try. He told me
that whatever I could achieve would never be good enough for what I was. The perfection of flattery! Was it that he
thought I had not talent of any sort? It’s possible. He would know. I’ve had the idea since that he was jealous. He
wasn’t jealous of mankind any more than he was afraid of thieves for his collection; but he may have been jealous of
what he could see in me, of some passion that could be aroused. But if so he never repented. I shall never forget his
last words. He saw me standing beside his bed, defenceless, symbolic and forlorn, and all he found to say was, ‘Well, I
am like that.’

I forgot myself in watching her. I had never seen anybody speak with less play of facial muscles. In the fullness of
its life her face preserved a sort of immobility. The words seemed to form themselves, fiery or pathetic, in the air,
outside her lips. Their design was hardly disturbed; a design of sweetness, gravity, and force as if born from the
inspiration of some artist; for I had never seen anything to come up to it in nature before or since.

All this was part of the enchantment she cast over me; and I seemed to notice that Mills had the aspect of a man
under a spell. If he too was a captive then I had no reason to feel ashamed of my surrender.

“And you know,” she began again abruptly, “that I have been accustomed to all the forms of respect.”

“That’s true,” murmured Mills, as if involuntarily.

“Well, yes,” she reaffirmed. “My instinct may have told me that my only protection was obscurity, but I didn’t know
how and where to find it. Oh, yes, I had that instinct . . . But there were other instincts and
. . . How am I to tell you? I didn’t know how to be on guard against myself, either. Not a soul to speak to,
or to get a warning from. Some woman soul that would have known, in which perhaps I could have seen my own reflection.
I assure you the only woman that ever addressed me directly, and that was in writing, was . . . ”

She glanced aside, saw Mr. Blunt returning from the ball and added rapidly in a lowered voice,

“His mother.”

The bright, mechanical smile of Mr. Blunt gleamed at us right down the room, but he didn’t, as it were, follow it in
his body. He swerved to the nearest of the two big fireplaces and finding some cigarettes on the mantelpiece remained
leaning on his elbow in the warmth of the bright wood fire. I noticed then a bit of mute play. The heiress of Henry
Allegre, who could secure neither obscurity nor any other alleviation to that invidious position, looked as if she
would speak to Blunt from a distance; but in a moment the confident eagerness of her face died out as if killed by a
sudden thought. I didn’t know then her shrinking from all falsehood and evasion; her dread of insincerity and
disloyalty of every kind. But even then I felt that at the very last moment her being had recoiled before some shadow
of a suspicion. And it occurred to me, too, to wonder what sort of business Mr. Blunt could have had to transact with
our odious visitor, of a nature so urgent as to make him run out after him into the hall? Unless to beat him a little
with one of the sticks that were to be found there? White hair so much like an expensive wig could not be considered a
serious protection. But it couldn’t have been that. The transaction, whatever it was, had been much too quiet. I must
say that none of us had looked out of the window and that I didn’t know when the man did go or if he was gone at all.
As a matter of fact he was already far away; and I may just as well say here that I never saw him again in my life. His
passage across my field of vision was like that of other figures of that time: not to be forgotten, a little fantastic,
infinitely enlightening for my contempt, darkening for my memory which struggles still with the clear lights and the
ugly shadows of those unforgotten days.

Chapter 4

It was past four o’clock before I left the house, together with Mills. Mr. Blunt, still in his
riding costume, escorted us to the very door. He asked us to send him the first fiacre we met on our way to town. “It’s
impossible to walk in this get-up through the streets,” he remarked, with his brilliant smile.

At this point I propose to transcribe some notes I made at the time in little black books which I have hunted up in
the litter of the past; very cheap, common little note-books that by the lapse of years have acquired a touching
dimness of aspect, the frayed, worn-out dignity of documents.

Expression on paper has never been my forte. My life had been a thing of outward manifestations. I never had been
secret or even systematically taciturn about my simple occupations which might have been foolish but had never required
either caution or mystery. But in those four hours since midday a complete change had come over me. For good or evil I
left that house committed to an enterprise that could not be talked about; which would have appeared to many senseless
and perhaps ridiculous, but was certainly full of risks, and, apart from that, commanded discretion on the ground of
simple loyalty. It would not only close my lips but it would to a certain extent cut me off from my usual haunts and
from the society of my friends; especially of the light-hearted, young, harum-scarum kind. This was unavoidable. It was
because I felt myself thrown back upon my own thoughts and forbidden to seek relief amongst other lives — it was
perhaps only for that reason at first I started an irregular, fragmentary record of my days.

I made these notes not so much to preserve the memory (one cared not for any to-morrow then) but to help me to keep
a better hold of the actuality. I scribbled them on shore and I scribbled them on the sea; and in both cases they are
concerned not only with the nature of the facts but with the intensity of my sensations. It may be, too, that I learned
to love the sea for itself only at that time. Woman and the sea revealed themselves to me together, as it were: two
mistresses of life’s values. The illimitable greatness of the one, the unfathomable seduction of the other working
their immemorial spells from generation to generation fell upon my heart at last: a common fortune, an unforgettable
memory of the sea’s formless might and of the sovereign charm in that woman’s form wherein there seemed to beat the
pulse of divinity rather than blood.

I begin here with the notes written at the end of that very day.

— Parted with Mills on the quay. We had walked side by side in absolute silence. The fact is he is too old for me to
talk to him freely. For all his sympathy and seriousness I don’t know what note to strike and I am not at all certain
what he thinks of all this. As we shook hands at parting, I asked him how much longer he expected to stay. And he
answered me that it depended on R. She was making arrangements for him to cross the frontier. He wanted to see the very
ground on which the Principle of Legitimacy was actually asserting itself arms in hand. It sounded to my positive mind
the most fantastic thing in the world, this elimination of personalities from what seemed but the merest political,
dynastic adventure. So it wasn’t Dona Rita, it wasn’t Blunt, it wasn’t the Pretender with his big infectious laugh, it
wasn’t all that lot of politicians, archbishops, and generals, of monks, guerrilleros, and smugglers by sea and land,
of dubious agents and shady speculators and undoubted swindlers, who were pushing their fortunes at the risk of their
precious skins. No. It was the Legitimist Principle asserting itself! Well, I would accept the view but with one
reservation. All the others might have been merged into the idea, but I, the latest recruit, I would not be merged in
the Legitimist Principle. Mine was an act of independent assertion. Never before had I felt so intensely aware of my
personality. But I said nothing of that to Mills. I only told him I thought we had better not be seen very often
together in the streets. He agreed. Hearty handshake. Looked affectionately after his broad back. It never occurred to
him to turn his head. What was I in comparison with the Principle of Legitimacy?

Late that night I went in search of Dominic. That Mediterranean sailor was just the man I wanted. He had a great
experience of all unlawful things that can be done on the seas and he brought to the practice of them much wisdom and
audacity. That I didn’t know where he lived was nothing since I knew where he loved. The proprietor of a small, quiet
cafe on the quay, a certain Madame Leonore, a woman of thirty-five with an open Roman face and intelligent black eyes,
had captivated his heart years ago. In that cafe with our heads close together over a marble table, Dominic and I held
an earnest and endless confabulation while Madame Leonore, rustling a black silk skirt, with gold earrings, with her
raven hair elaborately dressed and something nonchalant in her movements, would take occasion, in passing to and fro,
to rest her hand for a moment on Dominic’s shoulder. Later when the little cafe had emptied itself of its habitual
customers, mostly people connected with the work of ships and cargoes, she came quietly to sit at our table and looking
at me very hard with her black, sparkling eyes asked Dominic familiarly what had happened to his Signorino. It was her
name for me. I was Dominic’s Signorino. She knew me by no other; and our connection has always been somewhat of a
riddle to her. She said that I was somehow changed since she saw me last. In her rich voice she urged Dominic only to
look at my eyes. I must have had some piece of luck come to me either in love or at cards, she bantered. But Dominic
answered half in scorn that I was not of the sort that runs after that kind of luck. He stated generally that there
were some young gentlemen very clever in inventing new ways of getting rid of their time and their money. However, if
they needed a sensible man to help them he had no objection himself to lend a hand. Dominic’s general scorn for the
beliefs, and activities, and abilities of upper-class people covered the Principle of Legitimacy amply; but he could
not resist the opportunity to exercise his special faculties in a field he knew of old. He had been a desperate
smuggler in his younger days. We settled the purchase of a fast sailing craft. Agreed that it must be a balancelle and
something altogether out of the common. He knew of one suitable but she was in Corsica. Offered to start for Bastia by
mail-boat in the morning. All the time the handsome and mature Madame Leonore sat by, smiling faintly, amused at her
great man joining like this in a frolic of boys. She said the last words of that evening: “You men never grow up,”
touching lightly the grey hair above his temple.

A fortnight later.

. . . In the afternoon to the Prado. Beautiful day. At the moment of ringing at the door a strong emotion
of an anxious kind. Why? Down the length of the dining-room in the rotunda part full of afternoon light Dona R.,
sitting cross-legged on the divan in the attitude of a very old idol or a very young child and surrounded by many
cushions, waves her hand from afar pleasantly surprised, exclaiming: “What! Back already!” I give her all the details
and we talk for two hours across a large brass bowl containing a little water placed between us, lighting cigarettes
and dropping them, innumerable, puffed at, yet untasted in the overwhelming interest of the conversation. Found her
very quick in taking the points and very intelligent in her suggestions. All formality soon vanished between us and
before very long I discovered myself sitting cross-legged, too, while I held forth on the qualities of different
Mediterranean sailing craft and on the romantic qualifications of Dominic for the task. I believe I gave her the whole
history of the man, mentioning even the existence of Madame Leonore, since the little cafe would have to be the
headquarters of the marine part of the plot.

She murmured, “Ah! Une belle Romaine,” thoughtfully. She told me that she liked to hear people of that sort spoken
of in terms of our common humanity. She observed also that she wished to see Dominic some day; to set her eyes for once
on a man who could be absolutely depended on. She wanted to know whether he had engaged himself in this adventure
solely for my sake.

I said that no doubt it was partly that. We had been very close associates in the West Indies from where we had
returned together, and he had a notion that I could be depended on, too. But mainly, I suppose, it was from taste. And
there was in him also a fine carelessness as to what he did and a love of venturesome enterprise.

“And you,” she said. “Is it carelessness, too?”

“In a measure,” I said. “Within limits.”

“And very soon you will get tired.”

“When I do I will tell you. But I may also get frightened. I suppose you know there are risks, I mean apart from the
risk of life.”

“As for instance,” she said.

“For instance, being captured, tried, and sentenced to what they call ‘the galleys,’ in Ceuta.”

“And all this from that love for. . .”

“Not for Legitimacy,” I interrupted the inquiry lightly. “But what’s the use asking such questions? It’s like asking
the veiled figure of fate. It doesn’t know its own mind nor its own heart. It has no heart. But what if I were to start
asking you — who have a heart and are not veiled to my sight?” She dropped her charming adolescent head, so firm in
modelling, so gentle in expression. Her uncovered neck was round like the shaft of a column. She wore the same wrapper
of thick blue silk. At that time she seemed to live either in her riding habit or in that wrapper folded tightly round
her and open low to a point in front. Because of the absence of all trimming round the neck and from the deep view of
her bare arms in the wide sleeve this garment seemed to be put directly on her skin and gave one the impression of
one’s nearness to her body which would have been troubling but for the perfect unconsciousness of her manner. That day
she carried no barbarous arrow in her hair. It was parted on one side, brushed back severely, and tied with a black
ribbon, without any bronze mist about her forehead or temple. This smoothness added to the many varieties of her
expression also that of child-like innocence.

Great progress in our intimacy brought about unconsciously by our enthusiastic interest in the matter of our
discourse and, in the moments of silence, by the sympathetic current of our thoughts. And this rapidly growing
familiarity (truly, she had a terrible gift for it) had all the varieties of earnestness: serious, excited, ardent, and
even gay. She laughed in contralto; but her laugh was never very long; and when it had ceased, the silence of the room
with the light dying in all its many windows seemed to lie about me warmed by its vibration.

As I was preparing to take my leave after a longish pause into which we had fallen as into a vague dream, she came
out of it with a start and a quiet sigh. She said, “I had forgotten myself.” I took her hand and was raising it
naturally, without premeditation, when I felt suddenly the arm to which it belonged become insensible, passive, like a
stuffed limb, and the whole woman go inanimate all over! Brusquely I dropped the hand before it reached my lips; and it
was so lifeless that it fell heavily on to the divan.

I remained standing before her. She raised to me not her eyes but her whole face, inquisitively — perhaps in
appeal.

“No! This isn’t good enough for me,” I said.

The last of the light gleamed in her long enigmatic eyes as if they were precious enamel in that shadowy head which
in its immobility suggested a creation of a distant past: immortal art, not transient life. Her voice had a profound
quietness. She excused herself.

“It’s only habit — or instinct — or what you like. I have had to practise that in self-defence lest I should be
tempted sometimes to cut the arm off.”

I remembered the way she had abandoned this very arm and hand to the white-haired ruffian. It rendered me gloomy and
idiotically obstinate.

“Very ingenious. But this sort of thing is of no use to me,” I declared.

“Make it up,” suggested her mysterious voice, while her shadowy figure remained unmoved, indifferent amongst the
cushions.

I didn’t stir either. I refused in the same low tone.

“No. Not before you give it to me yourself some day.”

“Yes — some day,” she repeated in a breath in which there was no irony but rather hesitation, reluctance what did I
know?

I walked away from the house in a curious state of gloomy satisfaction with myself.

And this is the last extract. A month afterwards.

— This afternoon going up to the Villa I was for the first time accompanied in my way by some misgivings. To-morrow
I sail.

First trip and therefore in the nature of a trial trip; and I can’t overcome a certain gnawing emotion, for it is a
trip that MUSTN’T fail. In that sort of enterprise there is no room for mistakes. Of all the individuals engaged in it
will every one be intelligent enough, faithful enough, bold enough? Looking upon them as a whole it seems impossible;
but as each has got only a limited part to play they may be found sufficient each for his particular trust. And will
they be all punctual, I wonder? An enterprise that hangs on the punctuality of many people, no matter how well disposed
and even heroic, hangs on a thread. This I have perceived to be also the greatest of Dominic’s concerns. He, too,
wonders. And when he breathes his doubts the smile lurking under the dark curl of his moustaches is not reassuring.

But there is also something exciting in such speculations and the road to the Villa seemed to me shorter than ever
before.

Let in by the silent, ever-active, dark lady’s maid, who is always on the spot and always on the way somewhere else,
opening the door with one hand, while she passes on, turning on one for a moment her quick, black eyes, which just miss
being lustrous, as if some one had breathed on them lightly.

On entering the long room I perceive Mills established in an armchair which he had dragged in front of the divan. I
do the same to another and there we sit side by side facing R., tenderly amiable yet somehow distant among her
cushions, with an immemorial seriousness in her long, shaded eyes and her fugitive smile hovering about but never
settling on her lips. Mills, who is just back from over the frontier, must have been asking R. whether she had been
worried again by her devoted friend with the white hair. At least I concluded so because I found them talking of the
heart-broken Azzolati. And after having answered their greetings I sit and listen to Rita addressing Mills
earnestly.

“No, I assure you Azzolati had done nothing to me. I knew him. He was a frequent visitor at the Pavilion, though I,
personally, never talked with him very much in Henry Allegre’s lifetime. Other men were more interesting, and he
himself was rather reserved in his manner to me. He was an international politician and financier — a nobody. He, like
many others, was admitted only to feed and amuse Henry Allegre’s scorn of the world, which was insatiable — I tell
you.”

“Yes,” said Mills. “I can imagine.”

“But I know. Often when we were alone Henry Allegre used to pour it into my ears. If ever anybody saw mankind
stripped of its clothes as the child sees the king in the German fairy tale, it’s I! Into my ears! A child’s! Too young
to die of fright. Certainly not old enough to understand — or even to believe. But then his arm was about me. I used to
laugh, sometimes. Laugh! At this destruction — at these ruins!”

“Yes,” said Mills, very steady before her fire. “But you have at your service the everlasting charm of life; you are
a part of the indestructible.”

“Am I? . . . But there is no arm about me now. The laugh! Where is my laugh? Give me back my laugh
. . . .”

And she laughed a little on a low note. I don’t know about Mills, but the subdued shadowy vibration of it echoed in
my breast which felt empty for a moment and like a large space that makes one giddy.

“The laugh is gone out of my heart, which at any rate used to feel protected. That feeling’s gone, too. And I myself
will have to die some day.”

“Certainly,” said Mills in an unaltered voice. “As to this body you. . .”

“Oh, yes! Thanks. It’s a very poor jest. Change from body to body as travellers used to change horses at post
houses. I’ve heard of this before . . . .”

“I’ve no doubt you have,” Mills put on a submissive air. “But are we to hear any more about Azzolati?”

“You shall. Listen. I had heard that he was invited to shoot at Rambouillet — a quiet party, not one of these great
shoots. I hear a lot of things. I wanted to have a certain information, also certain hints conveyed to a diplomatic
personage who was to be there, too. A personage that would never let me get in touch with him though I had tried many
times.”

“Incredible!” mocked Mills solemnly.

“The personage mistrusts his own susceptibility. Born cautious,” explained Dona Rita crisply with the slightest
possible quiver of her lips. “Suddenly I had the inspiration to make use of Azzolati, who had been reminding me by a
constant stream of messages that he was an old friend. I never took any notice of those pathetic appeals before. But in
this emergency I sat down and wrote a note asking him to come and dine with me in my hotel. I suppose you know I don’t
live in the Pavilion. I can’t bear the Pavilion now. When I have to go there I begin to feel after an hour or so that
it is haunted. I seem to catch sight of somebody I know behind columns, passing through doorways, vanishing here and
there. I hear light footsteps behind closed doors . . . My own!”

Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine. “Oh! Azzolati. It was a most solemn affair. It had
occurred to me to make a very elaborate toilet. It was most successful. Azzolati looked positively scared for a moment
as though he had got into the wrong suite of rooms. He had never before seen me en toilette, you understand. In the old
days once out of my riding habit I would never dress. I draped myself, you remember, Monsieur Mills. To go about like
that suited my indolence, my longing to feel free in my body, as at that time when I used to herd goats . . .
But never mind. My aim was to impress Azzolati. I wanted to talk to him seriously.”

There was something whimsical in the quick beat of her eyelids and in the subtle quiver of her lips. “And behold!
the same notion had occurred to Azzolati. Imagine that for this tete-e-tete dinner the creature had got himself up as
if for a reception at court. He displayed a brochette of all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his frac and had a
broad ribbon of some order across his shirt front. An orange ribbon. Bavarian, I should say. Great Roman Catholic,
Azzolati. It was always his ambition to be the banker of all the Bourbons in the world. The last remnants of his hair
were dyed jet black and the ends of his moustache were like knitting needles. He was disposed to be as soft as wax in
my hands. Unfortunately I had had some irritating interviews during the day. I was keeping down sudden impulses to
smash a glass, throw a plate on the floor, do something violent to relieve my feelings. His submissive attitude made me
still more nervous. He was ready to do anything in the world for me providing that I would promise him that he would
never find my door shut against him as long as he lived. You understand the impudence of it, don’t you? And his tone
was positively abject, too. I snapped back at him that I had no door, that I was a nomad. He bowed ironically till his
nose nearly touched his plate but begged me to remember that to his personal knowledge I had four houses of my own
about the world. And you know this made me feel a homeless outcast more than ever — like a little dog lost in the
street — not knowing where to go. I was ready to cry and there the creature sat in front of me with an imbecile smile
as much as to say ‘here is a poser for you . . . .’ I gnashed my teeth at him. Quietly, you know
. . . I suppose you two think that I am stupid.”

She paused as if expecting an answer but we made no sound and she continued with a remark.

“I have days like that. Often one must listen to false protestations, empty words, strings of lies all day long, so
that in the evening one is not fit for anything, not even for truth if it comes in one’s way. That idiot treated me to
a piece of brazen sincerity which I couldn’t stand. First of all he began to take me into his confidence; he boasted of
his great affairs, then started groaning about his overstrained life which left him no time for the amenities of
existence, for beauty, or sentiment, or any sort of ease of heart. His heart! He wanted me to sympathize with his
sorrows. Of course I ought to have listened. One must pay for service. Only I was nervous and tired. He bored me. I
told him at last that I was surprised that a man of such immense wealth should still keep on going like this reaching
for more and more. I suppose he must have been sipping a good deal of wine while we talked and all at once he let out
an atrocity which was too much for me. He had been moaning and sentimentalizing but then suddenly he showed me his
fangs. ‘No,’ he cries, ‘you can’t imagine what a satisfaction it is to feel all that penniless, beggarly lot of the
dear, honest, meritorious poor wriggling and slobbering under one’s boots.’ You may tell me that he is a contemptible
animal anyhow, but you should have heard the tone! I felt my bare arms go cold like ice. A moment before I had been hot
and faint with sheer boredom. I jumped up from the table, rang for Rose, and told her to bring me my fur cloak. He
remained in his chair leering at me curiously. When I had the fur on my shoulders and the girl had gone out of the room
I gave him the surprise of his life. ‘Take yourself off instantly,’ I said. ‘Go trample on the poor if you like but
never dare speak to me again.’ At this he leaned his head on his arm and sat so long at the table shading his eyes with
his hand that I had to ask, calmly — you know — whether he wanted me to have him turned out into the corridor. He
fetched an enormous sigh. ‘I have only tried to be honest with you, Rita.’ But by the time he got to the door he had
regained some of his impudence. ‘You know how to trample on a poor fellows too,’ he said. ‘But I don’t mind being made
to wriggle under your pretty shoes, Rita. I forgive you. I thought you were free from all vulgar sentimentalism and
that you had a more independent mind. I was mistaken in you, that’s all.’ With that he pretends to dash a tear from his
eye-crocodile! — and goes out, leaving me in my fur by the blazing fire, my teeth going like castanets . . .
Did you ever hear of anything so stupid as this affair?” she concluded in a tone of extreme candour and a profound
unreadable stare that went far beyond us both. And the stillness of her lips was so perfect directly she ceased
speaking that I wondered whether all this had come through them or only had formed itself in my mind.

Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only.

“It’s like taking the lids off boxes and seeing ugly toads staring at you. In every one. Every one. That’s what it
is having to do with men more than mere — Good-morning — Good evening. And if you try to avoid meddling with their
lids, some of them will take them off themselves. And they don’t even know, they don’t even suspect what they are
showing you. Certain confidences — they don’t see it — are the bitterest kind of insult. I suppose Azzolati imagines
himself a noble beast of prey. Just as some others imagine themselves to be most delicate, noble, and refined
gentlemen. And as likely as not they would trade on a woman’s troubles — and in the end make nothing of that either.
Idiots!”

The utter absence of all anger in this spoken meditation gave it a character of touching simplicity. And as if it
had been truly only a meditation we conducted ourselves as though we had not heard it. Mills began to speak of his
experiences during his visit to the army of the Legitimist King. And I discovered in his speeches that this man of
books could be graphic and picturesque. His admiration for the devotion and bravery of the army was combined with the
greatest distaste for what he had seen of the way its great qualities were misused. In the conduct of this great
enterprise he had seen a deplorable levity of outlook, a fatal lack of decision, an absence of any reasoned plan.

He shook his head.

“I feel that you of all people, Dona Rita, ought to be told the truth. I don’t know exactly what you have at
stake.”

She was rosy like some impassive statue in a desert in the flush of the dawn.

“Not my heart,” she said quietly. “You must believe that.”

“I do. Perhaps it would have been better if you . . . ”

“No, Monsieur le Philosophe. It would not have been better. Don’t make that serious face at me,” she went on with
tenderness in a playful note, as if tenderness had been her inheritance of all time and playfulness the very fibre of
her being. “I suppose you think that a woman who has acted as I did and has not staked her heart on it is
. . . How do you know to what the heart responds as it beats from day to day?”

“I wouldn’t judge you. What am I before the knowledge you were born to? You are as old as the world.”

She accepted this with a smile. I who was innocently watching them was amazed to discover how much a fleeting thing
like that could hold of seduction without the help of any other feature and with that unchanging glance.

“With me it is pun d’onor. To my first independent friend.”

“You were soon parted,” ventured Mills, while I sat still under a sense of oppression.

“Don’t think for a moment that I have been scared off,” she said. “It is they who were frightened. I suppose you
heard a lot of Headquarters gossip?”

“Oh, yes,” Mills said meaningly. “The fair and the dark are succeeding each other like leaves blown in the wind
dancing in and out. I suppose you have noticed that leaves blown in the wind have a look of happiness.”

“Yes,” she said, “that sort of leaf is dead. Then why shouldn’t it look happy? And so I suppose there is no
uneasiness, no occasion for fears amongst the ‘responsibles.’”

“Upon the whole not. Now and then a leaf seems as if it would stick. There is for instance Madame. . .”

“Oh, I don’t want to know, I understand it all, I am as old as the world.”

“Yes,” said Mills thoughtfully, “you are not a leaf, you might have been a tornado yourself.”

“Upon my word,” she said, “there was a time that they thought I could carry him off, away from them all — beyond
them all. Verily, I am not very proud of their fears. There was nothing reckless there worthy of a great passion. There
was nothing sad there worthy of a great tenderness.”

“And is THIS the word of the Venetian riddle?” asked Mills, fixing her with his keen eyes.

“If it pleases you to think so, Senor,” she said indifferently. The movement of her eyes, their veiled gleam became
mischievous when she asked, “And Don Juan Blunt, have you seen him over there?”

“I fancy he avoided me. Moreover, he is always with his regiment at the outposts. He is a most valorous captain. I
heard some people describe him as foolhardy.”

“Oh, he needn’t seek death,” she said in an indefinable tone. “I mean as a refuge. There will be nothing in his life
great enough for that.”

“You are angry. You miss him, I believe, Dona Rita.”

“Angry? No! Weary. But of course it’s very inconvenient. I can’t very well ride out alone. A solitary amazon
swallowing the dust and the salt spray of the Corniche promenade would attract too much attention. And then I don’t
mind you two knowing that I am afraid of going out alone.”

“Afraid?” we both exclaimed together.

“You men are extraordinary. Why do you want me to be courageous? Why shouldn’t I be afraid? Is it because there is
no one in the world to care what would happen to me?”

There was a deep-down vibration in her tone for the first time. We had not a word to say. And she added after a long
silence:

“There is a very good reason. There is a danger.”

With wonderful insight Mills affirmed at once:

“Something ugly.”

She nodded slightly several times. Then Mills said with conviction:

“Ah! Then it can’t be anything in yourself. And if so . . . ”

I was moved to extravagant advice.

“You should come out with me to sea then. There may be some danger there but there’s nothing ugly to fear.”

She gave me a startled glance quite unusual with her, more than wonderful to me; and suddenly as though she had seen
me for the first time she exclaimed in a tone of compunction:

“Oh! And there is this one, too! Why! Oh, why should he run his head into danger for those things that will all
crumble into dust before long?”

I said: “YOU won’t crumble into dust.” And Mills chimed in:

“That young enthusiast will always have his sea.”

We were all standing up now. She kept her eyes on me, and repeated with a sort of whimsical enviousness:

“The sea! The violet sea — and he is longing to rejoin it! . . . At night! Under the stars!
. . . A lovers’ meeting,” she went on, thrilling me from head to foot with those two words, accompanied by a
wistful smile pointed by a suspicion of mockery. She turned away.

“And you, Monsieur Mills?” she asked.

“I am going back to my books,” he declared with a very serious face. “My adventure is over.”

“Each one to his love,” she bantered us gently. “Didn’t I love books, too, at one time! They seemed to contain all
wisdom and hold a magic power, too. Tell me, Monsieur Mills, have you found amongst them in some black-letter volume
the power of foretelling a poor mortal’s destiny, the power to look into the future? Anybody’s future. . .” Mills shook
his head . . . “What, not even mine?” she coaxed as if she really believed in a magic power to be found in
books.

Mills shook his head again. “No, I have not the power,” he said. “I am no more a great magician, than you are a poor
mortal. You have your ancient spells. You are as old as the world. Of us two it’s you that are more fit to foretell the
future of the poor mortals on whom you happen to cast your eyes.”

At these words she cast her eyes down and in the moment of deep silence I watched the slight rising and falling of
her breast. Then Mills pronounced distinctly: “Good-bye, old Enchantress.”

They shook hands cordially. “Good-bye, poor Magician,” she said.

Mills made as if to speak but seemed to think better of it. Dona Rita returned my distant how with a slight,
charmingly ceremonious inclination of her body.

“Bon voyage and a happy return,” she said formally.

I was following Mills through the door when I heard her voice behind us raised in recall:

“Oh, a moment . . . I forgot. . .”

I turned round. The call was for me, and I walked slowly back wondering what she could have forgotten. She waited in
the middle of the room with lowered head, with a mute gleam in her deep blue eyes. When I was near enough she extended
to me without a word her bare white arm and suddenly pressed the back of her hand against my lips. I was too startled
to seize it with rapture. It detached itself from my lips and fell slowly by her side. We had made it up and there was
nothing to say. She turned away to the window and I hurried out of the room.

PART THREE

Chapter 1

It was on our return from that first trip that I took Dominic up to the Villa to be presented to
Dona Rita. If she wanted to look on the embodiment of fidelity, resource, and courage, she could behold it all in that
man. Apparently she was not disappointed. Neither was Dominic disappointed. During the half-hour’s interview they got
into touch with each other in a wonderful way as if they had some common and secret standpoint in life. Maybe it was
their common lawlessness, and their knowledge of things as old as the world. Her seduction, his recklessness, were both
simple, masterful and, in a sense, worthy of each other.

Dominic was, I won’t say awed by this interview. No woman could awe Dominic. But he was, as it were, rendered
thoughtful by it, like a man who had not so much an experience as a sort of revelation vouchsafed to him. Later, at
sea, he used to refer to La Senora in a particular tone and I knew that henceforth his devotion was not for me alone.
And I understood the inevitability of it extremely well. As to Dona Rita she, after Dominic left the room, had turned
to me with animation and said: “But he is perfect, this man.” Afterwards she often asked after him and used to refer to
him in conversation. More than once she said to me: “One would like to put the care of one’s personal safety into the
hands of that man. He looks as if he simply couldn’t fail one.” I admitted that this was very true, especially at sea.
Dominic couldn’t fail. But at the same time I rather chaffed Rita on her preoccupation as to personal safety that so
often cropped up in her talk.

“One would think you were a crowned head in a revolutionary world,” I used to tell her.

“That would be different. One would be standing then for something, either worth or not worth dying for. One could
even run away then and be done with it. But I can’t run away unless I got out of my skin and left that behind. Don’t
you understand? You are very stupid. . .” But she had the grace to add, “On purpose.”

I don’t know about the on purpose. I am not certain about the stupidity. Her words bewildered one often and
bewilderment is a sort of stupidity. I remedied it by simply disregarding the sense of what she said. The sound was
there and also her poignant heart-gripping presence giving occupation enough to one’s faculties. In the power of those
things over one there was mystery enough. It was more absorbing than the mere obscurity of her speeches. But I daresay
she couldn’t understand that.

Hence, at times, the amusing outbreaks of temper in word and gesture that only strengthened the natural, the
invincible force of the spell. Sometimes the brass bowl would get upset or the cigarette box would fly up, dropping a
shower of cigarettes on the floor. We would pick them up, re-establish everything, and fall into a long silence, so
close that the sound of the first word would come with all the pain of a separation.

It was at that time, too, that she suggested I should take up my quarters in her house in the street of the Consuls.
There were certain advantages in that move. In my present abode my sudden absences might have been in the long run
subject to comment. On the other hand, the house in the street of Consuls was a known out-post of Legitimacy. But then
it was covered by the occult influence of her who was referred to in confidential talks, secret communications, and
discreet whispers of Royalist salons as: “Madame de Lastaola.”

That was the name which the heiress of Henry Allegre had decided to adopt when, according to her own expression, she
had found herself precipitated at a moment’s notice into the crowd of mankind. It is strange how the death of Henry
Allegre, which certainly the poor man had not planned, acquired in my view the character of a heartless desertion. It
gave one a glimpse of amazing egoism in a sentiment to which one could hardly give a name, a mysterious appropriation
of one human being by another as if in defiance of unexpressed things and for an unheard-of satisfaction of an
inconceivable pride. If he had hated her he could not have flung that enormous fortune more brutally at her head. And
his unrepentant death seemed to lift for a moment the curtain on something lofty and sinister like an Olympian’s
caprice.

Dona Rita said to me once with humorous resignation: “You know, it appears that one must have a name. That’s what
Henry Allegre’s man of business told me. He was quite impatient with me about it. But my name, amigo, Henry Allegre had
taken from me like all the rest of what I had been once. All that is buried with him in his grave. It wouldn’t have
been true. That is how I felt about it. So I took that one.” She whispered to herself: “Lastaola,” not as if to test
the sound but as if in a dream.

To this day I am not quite certain whether it was the name of any human habitation, a lonely caserio with a
half-effaced carving of a coat of arms over its door, or of some hamlet at the dead end of a ravine with a stony slope
at the back. It might have been a hill for all I know or perhaps a stream. A wood, or perhaps a combination of all
these: just a bit of the earth’s surface. Once I asked her where exactly it was situated and she answered, waving her
hand cavalierly at the dead wall of the room: “Oh, over there.” I thought that this was all that I was going to hear
but she added moodily, “I used to take my goats there, a dozen or so of them, for the day. From after my uncle had said
his Mass till the ringing of the evening bell.”

I saw suddenly the lonely spot, sketched for me some time ago by a few words from Mr. Blunt, populated by the agile,
bearded beasts with cynical heads, and a little misty figure dark in the sunlight with a halo of dishevelled
rust-coloured hair about its head.

The epithet of rust-coloured comes from her. It was really tawny. Once or twice in my hearing she had referred to
“my rust-coloured hair” with laughing vexation. Even then it was unruly, abhorring the restraints of civilization, and
often in the heat of a dispute getting into the eyes of Madame de Lastaola, the possessor of coveted art treasures, the
heiress of Henry Allegre. She proceeded in a reminiscent mood, with a faint flash of gaiety all over her face, except
her dark blue eyes that moved so seldom out of their fixed scrutiny of things invisible to other human beings.

“The goats were very good. We clambered amongst the stones together. They beat me at that game. I used to catch my
hair in the bushes.”

“Your rust-coloured hair,” I whispered.

“Yes, it was always this colour. And I used to leave bits of my frock on thorns here and there. It was pretty thin,
I can tell you. There wasn’t much at that time between my skin and the blue of the sky. My legs were as sunburnt as my
face; but really I didn’t tan very much. I had plenty of freckles though. There were no looking-glasses in the
Presbytery but uncle had a piece not bigger than my two hands for his shaving. One Sunday I crept into his room and had
a peep at myself. And wasn’t I startled to see my own eyes looking at me! But it was fascinating, too. I was about
eleven years old then, and I was very friendly with the goats, and I was as shrill as a cicada and as slender as a
match. Heavens! When I overhear myself speaking sometimes, or look at my limbs, it doesn’t seem to be possible. And yet
it is the same one. I do remember every single goat. They were very clever. Goats are no trouble really; they don’t
scatter much. Mine never did even if I had to hide myself out of their sight for ever so long.”

It was but natural to ask her why she wanted to hide, and she uttered vaguely what was rather a comment on my
question:

“It was like fate.” But I chose to take it otherwise, teasingly, because we were often like a pair of children.

“Oh, really,” I said, “you talk like a pagan. What could you know of fate at that time? What was it like? Did it
come down from Heaven?”

“Don’t be stupid. It used to come along a cart-track that was there and it looked like a boy. Wasn’t he a little
devil though. You understand, I couldn’t know that. He was a wealthy cousin of mine. Round there we are all related,
all cousins — as in Brittany. He wasn’t much bigger than myself but he was older, just a boy in blue breeches and with
good shoes on his feet, which of course interested and impressed me. He yelled to me from below, I screamed to him from
above, he came up and sat down near me on a stone, never said a word, let me look at him for half an hour before he
condescended to ask me who I was. And the airs he gave himself! He quite intimidated me sitting there perfectly dumb. I
remember trying to hide my bare feet under the edge of my skirt as I sat below him on the ground.

“C’est comique, eh!” she interrupted herself to comment in a melancholy tone. I looked at her sympathetically and
she went on:

“He was the only son from a rich farmhouse two miles down the slope. In winter they used to send him to school at
Tolosa. He had an enormous opinion of himself; he was going to keep a shop in a town by and by and he was about the
most dissatisfied creature I have ever seen. He had an unhappy mouth and unhappy eyes and he was always wretched about
something: about the treatment he received, about being kept in the country and chained to work. He was moaning and
complaining and threatening all the world, including his father and mother. He used to curse God, yes, that boy,
sitting there on a piece of rock like a wretched little Prometheus with a sparrow peeking at his miserable little
liver. And the grand scenery of mountains all round, ha, ha, ha!”

She laughed in contralto: a penetrating sound with something generous in it; not infectious, but in others provoking
a smile.

“Of course I, poor little animal, I didn’t know what to make of it, and I was even a little frightened. But at first
because of his miserable eyes I was sorry for him, almost as much as if he had been a sick goat. But, frightened or
sorry, I don’t know how it is, I always wanted to laugh at him, too, I mean from the very first day when he let me
admire him for half an hour. Yes, even then I had to put my hand over my mouth more than once for the sake of good
manners, you understand. And yet, you know, I was never a laughing child.

“One day he came up and sat down very dignified a little bit away from me and told me he had been thrashed for
wandering in the hills.

“‘To be with me?’ I asked. And he said: ‘To be with you! No. My people don’t know what I do.’ I can’t tell why, but
I was annoyed. So instead of raising a clamour of pity over him, which I suppose he expected me to do, I asked him if
the thrashing hurt very much. He got up, he had a switch in his hand, and walked up to me, saying, ‘I will soon show
you.’ I went stiff with fright; but instead of slashing at me he dropped down by my side and kissed me on the cheek.
Then he did it again, and by that time I was gone dead all over and he could have done what he liked with the corpse
but he left off suddenly and then I came to life again and I bolted away. Not very far. I couldn’t leave the goats
altogether. He chased me round and about the rocks, but of course I was too quick for him in his nice town boots. When
he got tired of that game he started throwing stones. After that he made my life very lively for me. Sometimes he used
to come on me unawares and then I had to sit still and listen to his miserable ravings, because he would catch me round
the waist and hold me very tight. And yet, I often felt inclined to laugh. But if I caught sight of him at a distance
and tried to dodge out of the way he would start stoning me into a shelter I knew of and then sit outside with a heap
of stones at hand so that I daren’t show the end of my nose for hours. He would sit there and rave and abuse me till I
would burst into a crazy laugh in my hole; and then I could see him through the leaves rolling on the ground and biting
his fists with rage. Didn’t he hate me! At the same time I was often terrified. I am convinced now that if I had
started crying he would have rushed in and perhaps strangled me there. Then as the sun was about to set he would make
me swear that I would marry him when I was grown up. ‘Swear, you little wretched beggar,’ he would yell to me. And I
would swear. I was hungry, and I didn’t want to be made black and blue all over with stones. Oh, I swore ever so many
times to be his wife. Thirty times a month for two months. I couldn’t help myself. It was no use complaining to my
sister Therese. When I showed her my bruises and tried to tell her a little about my trouble she was quite scandalized.
She called me a sinful girl, a shameless creature. I assure you it puzzled my head so that, between Therese my sister
and Jose the boy, I lived in a state of idiocy almost. But luckily at the end of the two months they sent him away from
home for good. Curious story to happen to a goatherd living all her days out under God’s eye, as my uncle the Cura
might have said. My sister Therese was keeping house in the Presbytery. She’s a terrible person.”

“I have heard of your sister Therese,” I said.

“Oh, you have! Of my big sister Therese, six, ten years older than myself perhaps? She just comes a little above my
shoulder, but then I was always a long thing. I never knew my mother. I don’t even know how she looked. There are no
paintings or photographs in our farmhouses amongst the hills. I haven’t even heard her described to me. I believe I was
never good enough to be told these things. Therese decided that I was a lump of wickedness, and now she believes that I
will lose my soul altogether unless I take some steps to save it. Well, I have no particular taste that way. I suppose
it is annoying to have a sister going fast to eternal perdition, but there are compensations. The funniest thing is
that it’s Therese, I believe, who managed to keep me out of the Presbytery when I went out of my way to look in on them
on my return from my visit to the Quartel Real last year. I couldn’t have stayed much more than half an hour with them
anyway, but still I would have liked to get over the old doorstep. I am certain that Therese persuaded my uncle to go
out and meet me at the bottom of the hill. I saw the old man a long way off and I understood how it was. I dismounted
at once and met him on foot. We had half an hour together walking up and down the road. He is a peasant priest, he
didn’t know how to treat me. And of course I was uncomfortable, too. There wasn’t a single goat about to keep me in
countenance. I ought to have embraced him. I was always fond of the stern, simple old man. But he drew himself up when
I approached him and actually took off his hat to me. So simple as that! I bowed my head and asked for his blessing.
And he said ‘I would never refuse a blessing to a good Legitimist.’ So stern as that! And when I think that I was
perhaps the only girl of the family or in the whole world that he ever in his priest’s life patted on the head! When I
think of that I . . . I believe at that moment I was as wretched as he was himself. I handed him an envelope
with a big red seal which quite startled him. I had asked the Marquis de Villarel to give me a few words for him,
because my uncle has a great influence in his district; and the Marquis penned with his own hand some compliments and
an inquiry about the spirit of the population. My uncle read the letter, looked up at me with an air of mournful awe,
and begged me to tell his excellency that the people were all for God, their lawful King and their old privileges. I
said to him then, after he had asked me about the health of His Majesty in an awfully gloomy tone — I said then: ‘There
is only one thing that remains for me to do, uncle, and that is to give you two pounds of the very best snuff I have
brought here for you.’ What else could I have got for the poor old man? I had no trunks with me. I had to leave behind
a spare pair of shoes in the hotel to make room in my little bag for that snuff. And fancy! That old priest absolutely
pushed the parcel away. I could have thrown it at his head; but I thought suddenly of that hard, prayerful life,
knowing nothing of any ease or pleasure in the world, absolutely nothing but a pinch of snuff now and then. I
remembered how wretched he used to be when he lacked a copper or two to get some snuff with. My face was hot with
indignation, but before I could fly out at him I remembered how simple he was. So I said with great dignity that as the
present came from the King and as he wouldn’t receive it from my hand there was nothing else for me to do but to throw
it into the brook; and I made as if I were going to do it, too. He shouted: ‘Stay, unhappy girl! Is it really from His
Majesty, whom God preserve?’ I said contemptuously, ‘Of course.’ He looked at me with great pity in his eyes, sighed
deeply, and took the little tin from my hand. I suppose he imagined me in my abandoned way wheedling the necessary cash
out of the King for the purchase of that snuff. You can’t imagine how simple he is. Nothing was easier than to deceive
him; but don’t imagine I deceived him from the vainglory of a mere sinner. I lied to the dear man, simply because I
couldn’t bear the idea of him being deprived of the only gratification his big, ascetic, gaunt body ever knew on earth.
As I mounted my mule to go away he murmured coldly: ‘God guard you, Senora!’ Senora! What sternness! We were off a
little way already when his heart softened and he shouted after me in a terrible voice: ‘The road to Heaven is
repentance!’ And then, after a silence, again the great shout ‘Repentance!’ thundered after me. Was that sternness or
simplicity, I wonder? Or a mere unmeaning superstition, a mechanical thing? If there lives anybody completely honest in
this world, surely it must be my uncle. And yet — who knows?

“Would you guess what was the next thing I did? Directly I got over the frontier I wrote from Bayonne asking the old
man to send me out my sister here. I said it was for the service of the King. You see, I had thought suddenly of that
house of mine in which you once spent the night talking with Mr. Mills and Don Juan Blunt. I thought it would do
extremely well for Carlist officers coming this way on leave or on a mission. In hotels they might have been molested,
but I knew that I could get protection for my house. Just a word from the ministry in Paris to the Prefect. But I
wanted a woman to manage it for me. And where was I to find a trustworthy woman? How was I to know one when I saw her?
I don’t know how to talk to women. Of course my Rose would have done for me that or anything else; but what could I
have done myself without her? She has looked after me from the first. It was Henry Allegre who got her for me eight
years ago. I don’t know whether he meant it for a kindness but she’s the only human being on whom I can lean. She knows
. . . What doesn’t she know about me! She has never failed to do the right thing for me unasked. I couldn’t
part with her. And I couldn’t think of anybody else but my sister.

“After all it was somebody belonging to me. But it seemed the wildest idea. Yet she came at once. Of course I took
care to send her some money. She likes money. As to my uncle there is nothing that he wouldn’t have given up for the
service of the King. Rose went to meet her at the railway station. She told me afterwards that there had been no need
for me to be anxious about her recognizing Mademoiselle Therese. There was nobody else in the train that could be
mistaken for her. I should think not! She had made for herself a dress of some brown stuff like a nun’s habit and had a
crooked stick and carried all her belongings tied up in a handkerchief. She looked like a pilgrim to a saint’s shrine.
Rose took her to the house. She asked when she saw it: ‘And does this big place really belong to our Rita?’ My maid of
course said that it was mine. ‘And how long did our Rita live here?’ — ‘Madame has never seen it unless perhaps the
outside, as far as I know. I believe Mr. Allegre lived here for some time when he was a young man.’ — ‘The sinner
that’s dead?’ — ‘Just so,’ says Rose. You know nothing ever startles Rose. ‘Well, his sins are gone with him,’ said my
sister, and began to make herself at home.

“Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on the third day she was back with me with the remark that Mlle.
Therese knew her way about very well already and preferred to be left to herself. Some little time afterwards I went to
see that sister of mine. The first thing she said to me, ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you, Rita,’ and I said, ‘What a
funny dress you have, Therese, more fit for the portress of a convent than for this house.’ — ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and
unless you give this house to me, Rita, I will go back to our country. I will have nothing to do with your life, Rita.
Your life is no secret for me.’

“I was going from room to room and Therese was following me. ‘I don’t know that my life is a secret to anybody,’ I
said to her, ‘but how do you know anything about it?’ And then she told me that it was through a cousin of ours, that
horrid wretch of a boy, you know. He had finished his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish commercial house of some
kind, in Paris, and apparently had made it his business to write home whatever he could hear about me or ferret out
from those relations of mine with whom I lived as a girl. I got suddenly very furious. I raged up and down the room (we
were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from me as far as the door. I heard her say to herself, ‘It’s the evil
spirit in her that makes her like this.’ She was absolutely convinced of that. She made the sign of the cross in the
air to protect herself. I was quite astounded. And then I really couldn’t help myself. I burst into a laugh. I laughed
and laughed; I really couldn’t stop till Therese ran away. I went downstairs still laughing and found her in the hall
with her face to the wall and her fingers in her ears kneeling in a corner. I had to pull her out by the shoulders from
there. I don’t think she was frightened; she was only shocked. But I don’t suppose her heart is desperately bad,
because when I dropped into a chair feeling very tired she came and knelt in front of me and put her arms round my
waist and entreated me to cast off from me my evil ways with the help of saints and priests. Quite a little programme
for a reformed sinner. I got away at last. I left her sunk on her heels before the empty chair looking after me. ‘I
pray for you every night and morning, Rita,’ she said. — ‘Oh, yes. I know you are a good sister,’ I said to her. I was
letting myself out when she called after me, ‘And what about this house, Rita?’ I said to her, ‘Oh, you may keep it
till the day I reform and enter a convent.’ The last I saw of her she was still on her knees looking after me with her
mouth open. I have seen her since several times, but our intercourse is, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun
with some great lady. But I believe she really knows how to make men comfortable. Upon my word I think she likes to
look after men. They don’t seem to be such great sinners as women are. I think you could do worse than take up your
quarters at number 10. She will no doubt develop a saintly sort of affection for you, too.”

I don’t know that the prospect of becoming a favourite of Dona Rita’s peasant sister was very fascinating to me. If
I went to live very willingly at No. 10 it was because everything connected with Dona Rita had for me a peculiar
fascination. She had only passed through the house once as far as I knew; but it was enough. She was one of those
beings that leave a trace. I am not unreasonable — I mean for those that knew her. That is, I suppose, because she was
so unforgettable. Let us remember the tragedy of Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculous financier with a criminal soul
(or shall we say heart) and facile tears. No wonder, then, that for me, who may flatter myself without undue vanity
with being much finer than that grotesque international intriguer, the mere knowledge that Dona Rita had passed through
the very rooms in which I was going to live between the strenuous times of the sea-expeditions, was enough to fill my
inner being with a great content. Her glance, her darkly brilliant blue glance, had run over the walls of that room
which most likely would be mine to slumber in. Behind me, somewhere near the door, Therese, the peasant sister, said in
a funnily compassionate tone and in an amazingly landlady-of-a-boarding-house spirit of false persuasiveness:

“You will be very comfortable here, Senor. It is so peaceful here in the street. Sometimes one may think oneself in
a village. It’s only a hundred and twenty-five francs for the friends of the King. And I shall take such good care of
you that your very heart will be able to rest.”

Chapter 2

Dona Rita was curious to know how I got on with her peasant sister and all I could say in return for
that inquiry was that the peasant sister was in her own way amiable. At this she clicked her tongue amusingly and
repeated a remark she had made before: “She likes young men. The younger the better.” The mere thought of those two
women being sisters aroused one’s wonder. Physically they were altogether of different design. It was also the
difference between living tissue of glowing loveliness with a divine breath, and a hard hollow figure of baked
clay.

Indeed Therese did somehow resemble an achievement, wonderful enough in its way, in unglazed earthenware. The only
gleam perhaps that one could find on her was that of her teeth, which one used to get between her dull lips
unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little inexplicably, because it was never associated with a smile. She smiled with
compressed mouth. It was indeed difficult to conceive of those two birds coming from the same nest. And yet
. . . Contrary to what generally happens, it was when one saw those two women together that one lost all
belief in the possibility of their relationship near or far. It extended even to their common humanity. One, as it
were, doubted it. If one of the two was representative, then the other was either something more or less than human.
One wondered whether these two women belonged to the same scheme of creation. One was secretly amazed to see them
standing together, speaking to each other, having words in common, understanding each other. And yet! . . .
Our psychological sense is the crudest of all; we don’t know, we don’t perceive how superficial we are. The simplest
shades escape us, the secret of changes, of relations. No, upon the whole, the only feature (and yet with enormous
differences) which Therese had in common with her sister, as I told Dona Rita, was amiability.

“For, you know, you are a most amiable person yourself,” I went on. “It’s one of your characteristics, of course
much more precious than in other people. You transmute the commonest traits into gold of your own; but after all there
are no new names. You are amiable. You were most amiable to me when I first saw you.”

“Really. I was not aware. Not specially . . . ”

“I had never the presumption to think that it was special. Moreover, my head was in a whirl. I was lost in
astonishment first of all at what I had been listening to all night. Your history, you know, a wonderful tale with a
flavour of wine in it and wreathed in clouds, with that amazing decapitated, mutilated dummy of a woman lurking in a
corner, and with Blunt’s smile gleaming through a fog, the fog in my eyes, from Mills’ pipe, you know. I was feeling
quite inanimate as to body and frightfully stimulated as to mind all the time. I had never heard anything like that
talk about you before. Of course I wasn’t sleepy, but still I am not used to do altogether without sleep like Blunt. .
.”

“Kept awake all night listening to my story!” She marvelled.

“Yes. You don’t think I am complaining, do you? I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Blunt in a ragged old
jacket and a white tie and that incisive polite voice of his seemed strange and weird. It seemed as though he were
inventing it all rather angrily. I had doubts as to your existence.”

“Mr. Blunt is very much interested in my story.”

“Anybody would be,” I said. “I was. I didn’t sleep a wink. I was expecting to see you soon — and even then I had my
doubts.”

“As to my existence?”

“It wasn’t exactly that, though of course I couldn’t tell that you weren’t a product of Captain Blunt’s
sleeplessness. He seemed to dread exceedingly to be left alone and your story might have been a device to detain us. .
.”

“He hasn’t enough imagination for that,” she said.

“It didn’t occur to me. But there was Mills, who apparently believed in your existence. I could trust Mills. My
doubts were about the propriety. I couldn’t see any good reason for being taken to see you. Strange that it should be
my connection with the sea which brought me here to the Villa.”

“Unexpected perhaps.”

“No. I mean particularly strange and significant.”

“Why?”

“Because my friends are in the habit of telling me (and each other) that the sea is my only love. They were always
chaffing me because they couldn’t see or guess in my life at any woman, open or secret. . .”

“And is that really so?” she inquired negligently.

“Why, yes. I don’t mean to say that I am like an innocent shepherd in one of those interminable stories of the
eighteenth century. But I don’t throw the word love about indiscriminately. It may be all true about the sea; but some
people would say that they love sausages.”

“You are horrible.”

“I am surprised.”

“I mean your choice of words.”

“And you have never uttered a word yet that didn’t change into a pearl as it dropped from your lips. At least not
before me.”

She glanced down deliberately and said, “This is better. But I don’t see any of them on the floor.”

“It’s you who are horrible in the implications of your language. Don’t see any on the floor! Haven’t I caught up and
treasured them all in my heart? I am not the animal from which sausages are made.”

She looked at me suavely and then with the sweetest possible smile breathed out the word: “No.”

And we both laughed very loud. O! days of innocence! On this occasion we parted from each other on a light-hearted
note. But already I had acquired the conviction that there was nothing more lovable in the world than that woman;
nothing more life-giving, inspiring, and illuminating than the emanation of her charm. I meant it absolutely — not
excepting the light of the sun.

From this there was only one step further to take. The step into a conscious surrender; the open perception that
this charm, warming like a flame, was also all-revealing like a great light; giving new depth to shades, new brilliance
to colours, an amazing vividness to all sensations and vitality to all thoughts: so that all that had been lived before
seemed to have been lived in a drab world and with a languid pulse.

A great revelation this. I don’t mean to say it was soul-shaking. The soul was already a captive before doubt,
anguish, or dismay could touch its surrender and its exaltation. But all the same the revelation turned many things
into dust; and, amongst others, the sense of the careless freedom of my life. If that life ever had any purpose or any
aim outside itself I would have said that it threw a shadow across its path. But it hadn’t. There had been no path. But
there was a shadow, the inseparable companion of all light. No illumination can sweep all mystery out of the world.
After the departed darkness the shadows remain, more mysterious because as if more enduring; and one feels a dread of
them from which one was free before. What if they were to be victorious at the last? They, or what perhaps lurks in
them: fear, deception, desire, disillusion — all silent at first before the song of triumphant love vibrating in the
light. Yes. Silent. Even desire itself! All silent. But not for long!

This was, I think, before the third expedition. Yes, it must have been the third, for I remember that it was boldly
planned and that it was carried out without a hitch. The tentative period was over; all our arrangements had been
perfected. There was, so to speak, always an unfailing smoke on the hill and an unfailing lantern on the shore. Our
friends, mostly bought for hard cash and therefore valuable, had acquired confidence in us. This, they seemed to say,
is no unfathomable roguery of penniless adventurers. This is but the reckless enterprise of men of wealth and sense and
needn’t be inquired into. The young caballero has got real gold pieces in the belt he wears next his skin; and the man
with the heavy moustaches and unbelieving eyes is indeed very much of a man. They gave to Dominic all their respect and
to me a great show of deference; for I had all the money, while they thought that Dominic had all the sense. That
judgment was not exactly correct. I had my share of judgment and audacity which surprises me now that the years have
chilled the blood without dimming the memory. I remember going about the business with light-hearted, clear-headed
recklessness which, according as its decisions were sudden or considered, made Dominic draw his breath through his
clenched teeth, or look hard at me before he gave me either a slight nod of assent or a sarcastic “Oh, certainly” —
just as the humour of the moment prompted him.

One night as we were lying on a bit of dry sand under the lee of a rock, side by side, watching the light of our
little vessel dancing away at sea in the windy distance, Dominic spoke suddenly to me.

“I suppose Alphonso and Carlos, Carlos and Alphonso, they are nothing to you, together or separately?”

I said: “Dominic, if they were both to vanish from the earth together or separately it would make no difference to
my feelings.”

He remarked: “Just so. A man mourns only for his friends. I suppose they are no more friends to you than they are to
me. Those Carlists make a great consumption of cartridges. That is well. But why should we do all those mad things that
you will insist on us doing till my hair,” he pursued with grave, mocking exaggeration, “till my hair tries to stand up
on my head? and all for that Carlos, let God and the devil each guard his own, for that Majesty as they call him, but
after all a man like another and — no friend.”

“Yes, why?” I murmured, feeling my body nestled at ease in the sand.

It was very dark under the overhanging rock on that night of clouds and of wind that died and rose and died again.
Dominic’s voice was heard speaking low between the short gusts.

“Friend of the Senora, eh?”

“That’s what the world says, Dominic.”

“Half of what the world says are lies,” he pronounced dogmatically. “For all his majesty he may be a good enough
man. Yet he is only a king in the mountains and to-morrow he may be no more than you. Still a woman like that — one,
somehow, would grudge her to a better king. She ought to be set up on a high pillar for people that walk on the ground
to raise their eyes up to. But you are otherwise, you gentlemen. You, for instance, Monsieur, you wouldn’t want to see
her set up on a pillar.”

“That sort of thing, Dominic,” I said, “that sort of thing, you understand me, ought to be done early.”

He was silent for a time. And then his manly voice was heard in the shadow of the rock.

“I see well enough what you mean. I spoke of the multitude, that only raise their eyes. But for kings and suchlike
that is not enough. Well, no heart need despair; for there is not a woman that wouldn’t at some time or other get down
from her pillar for no bigger bribe perhaps than just a flower which is fresh to-day and withered to-morrow. And then,
what’s the good of asking how long any woman has been up there? There is a true saying that lips that have been kissed
do not lose their freshness.”

I don’t know what answer I could have made. I imagine Dominic thought himself unanswerable. As a matter of fact,
before I could speak, a voice came to us down the face of the rock crying secretly, “Ole, down there! All is safe
ashore.”

It was the boy who used to hang about the stable of a muleteer’s inn in a little shallow valley with a shallow
little stream in it, and where we had been hiding most of the day before coming down to the shore. We both started to
our feet and Dominic said, “A good boy that. You didn’t hear him either come or go above our heads. Don’t reward him
with more than one peseta, Senor, whatever he does. If you were to give him two he would go mad at the sight of so much
wealth and throw up his job at the Fonda, where he is so useful to run errands, in that way he has of skimming along
the paths without displacing a stone.”

Meantime he was busying himself with striking a fire to set alight a small heap of dry sticks he had made ready
beforehand on that spot which in all the circuit of the Bay was perfectly screened from observation from the land
side.

The clear flame shooting up revealed him in the black cloak with a hood of a Mediterranean sailor. His eyes watched
the dancing dim light to seaward. And he talked the while.

“The only fault you have, Senor, is being too generous with your money. In this world you must give sparingly. The
only things you may deal out without counting, in this life of ours which is but a little fight and a little love, is
blows to your enemy and kisses to a woman. . . . Ah! here they are coming in.”

I noticed the dancing light in the dark west much closer to the shore now. Its motion had altered. It swayed slowly
as it ran towards us, and, suddenly, the darker shadow as of a great pointed wing appeared gliding in the night. Under
it a human voice shouted something confidently.

“Bueno,” muttered Dominic. From some receptacle I didn’t see he poured a lot of water on the blaze, like a magician
at the end of a successful incantation that had called out a shadow and a voice from the immense space of the sea. And
his hooded figure vanished from my sight in a great hiss and the warm feel of ascending steam.

“That’s all over,” he said, “and now we go back for more work, more toil, more trouble, more exertion with hands and
feet, for hours and hours. And all the time the head turned over the shoulder, too.”

We were climbing a precipitous path sufficiently dangerous in the dark, Dominic, more familiar with it, going first
and I scrambling close behind in order that I might grab at his cloak if I chanced to slip or miss my footing. I
remonstrated against this arrangement as we stopped to rest. I had no doubt I would grab at his cloak if I felt myself
falling. I couldn’t help doing that. But I would probably only drag him down with me.

With one hand grasping a shadowy bush above his head he growled that all this was possible, but that it was all in
the bargain, and urged me onwards.

When we got on to the level that man whose even breathing no exertion, no danger, no fear or anger could disturb,
remarked as we strode side by side:

“I will say this for us, that we are carrying out all this deadly foolishness as conscientiously as though the eyes
of the Senora were on us all the time. And as to risk, I suppose we take more than she would approve of, I fancy, if
she ever gave a moment’s thought to us out here. Now, for instance, in the next half hour, we may come any moment on
three carabineers who would let off their pieces without asking questions. Even your way of flinging money about cannot
make safety for men set on defying a whole big country for the sake of — what is it exactly? — the blue eyes, or the
white arms of the Senora.”

He kept his voice equably low. It was a lonely spot and but for a vague shape of a dwarf tree here and there we had
only the flying clouds for company. Very far off a tiny light twinkled a little way up the seaward shoulder of an
invisible mountain. Dominic moved on.

“Fancy yourself lying here, on this wild spot, with a leg smashed by a shot or perhaps with a bullet in your side.
It might happen. A star might fall. I have watched stars falling in scores on clear nights in the Atlantic. And it was
nothing. The flash of a pinch of gunpowder in your face may be a bigger matter. Yet somehow it’s pleasant as we stumble
in the dark to think of our Senora in that long room with a shiny floor and all that lot of glass at the end, sitting
on that divan, you call it, covered with carpets as if expecting a king indeed. And very still. . .”

He remembered her — whose image could not be dismissed.

I laid my hand on his shoulder.

“That light on the mountain side flickers exceedingly, Dominic. Are we in the path?”

He addressed me then in French, which was between us the language of more formal moments.

“Prenez mon bras, monsieur. Take a firm hold, or I will have you stumbling again and falling into one of those
beastly holes, with a good chance to crack your head. And there is no need to take offence. For, speaking with all
respect, why should you, and I with you, be here on this lonely spot, barking our shins in the dark on the way to a
confounded flickering light where there will be no other supper but a piece of a stale sausage and a draught of
leathery wine out of a stinking skin. Pah!”

I had good hold of his arm. Suddenly he dropped the formal French and pronounced in his inflexible voice:

“For a pair of white arms, Senor. Bueno.”

He could understand.

Chapter 3

On our return from that expedition we came gliding into the old harbour so late that Dominic and I,
making for the cafe kept by Madame Leonore, found it empty of customers, except for two rather sinister fellows playing
cards together at a corner table near the door. The first thing done by Madame Leonore was to put her hands on
Dominic’s shoulders and look at arm’s length into the eyes of that man of audacious deeds and wild stratagems who
smiled straight at her from under his heavy and, at that time, uncurled moustaches.

Indeed we didn’t present a neat appearance, our faces unshaven, with the traces of dried salt sprays on our smarting
skins and the sleeplessness of full forty hours filming our eyes. At least it was so with me who saw as through a mist
Madame Leonore moving with her mature nonchalant grace, setting before us wine and glasses with a faint swish of her
ample black skirt. Under the elaborate structure of black hair her jet-black eyes sparkled like good-humoured stars and
even I could see that she was tremendously excited at having this lawless wanderer Dominic within her reach and as it
were in her power. Presently she sat down by us, touched lightly Dominic’s curly head silvered on the temples (she
couldn’t really help it), gazed at me for a while with a quizzical smile, observed that I looked very tired, and asked
Dominic whether for all that I was likely to sleep soundly to-night.

“I don’t know,” said Dominic, “He’s young. And there is always the chance of dreams.”

“What do you men dream of in those little barques of yours tossing for months on the water?”

“Mostly of nothing,” said Dominic. “But it has happened to me to dream of furious fights.”

“And of furious loves, too, no doubt,” she caught him up in a mocking voice.

“No, that’s for the waking hours,” Dominic drawled, basking sleepily with his head between his hands in her ardent
gaze. “The waking hours are longer.”

“They must be, at sea,” she said, never taking her eyes off him. “But I suppose you do talk of your loves
sometimes.”

“You may be sure, Madame Leonore,” I interjected, noticing the hoarseness of my voice, “that you at any rate are
talked about a lot at sea.”

“I am not so sure of that now. There is that strange lady from the Prado that you took him to see, Signorino. She
went to his head like a glass of wine into a tender youngster’s. He is such a child, and I suppose that I am another.
Shame to confess it, the other morning I got a friend to look after the cafe for a couple of hours, wrapped up my head,
and walked out there to the other end of the town. . . . Look at these two sitting up! And I thought they
were so sleepy and tired, the poor fellows!”

She kept our curiosity in suspense for a moment.

“Well, I have seen your marvel, Dominic,” she continued in a calm voice. “She came flying out of the gate on
horseback and it would have been all I would have seen of her if — and this is for you, Signorino — if she hadn’t
pulled up in the main alley to wait for a very good-looking cavalier. He had his moustaches so, and his teeth were very
white when he smiled at her. But his eyes are too deep in his head for my taste. I didn’t like it. It reminded me of a
certain very severe priest who used to come to our village when I was young; younger even than your marvel,
Dominic.”

“It was no priest in disguise, Madame Leonore,” I said, amused by her expression of disgust. “That’s an
American.”

“Ah! Un Americano! Well, never mind him. It was her that I went to see.”

“What! Walked to the other end of the town to see Dona Rita!” Dominic addressed her in a low bantering tone. “Why,
you were always telling me you couldn’t walk further than the end of the quay to save your life — or even mine, you
said.”

“Well, I did; and I walked back again and between the two walks I had a good look. And you may be sure — that will
surprise you both — that on the way back — oh, Santa Madre, wasn’t it a long way, too — I wasn’t thinking of any man at
sea or on shore in that connection.”

“No. And you were not thinking of yourself, either, I suppose,” I said. Speaking was a matter of great effort for
me, whether I was too tired or too sleepy, I can’t tell. “No, you were not thinking of yourself. You were thinking of a
woman, though.”

“Si. As much a woman as any of us that ever breathed in the world. Yes, of her! Of that very one! You see, we woman
are not like you men, indifferent to each other unless by some exception. Men say we are always against one another but
that’s only men’s conceit. What can she be to me? I am not afraid of the big child here,” and she tapped Dominic’s
forearm on which he rested his head with a fascinated stare. “With us two it is for life and death, and I am rather
pleased that there is something yet in him that can catch fire on occasion. I would have thought less of him if he
hadn’t been able to get out of hand a little, for something really fine. As for you, Signorino,” she turned on me with
an unexpected and sarcastic sally, “I am not in love with you yet.” She changed her tone from sarcasm to a soft and
even dreamy note. “A head like a gem,” went on that woman born in some by-street of Rome, and a plaything for years of
God knows what obscure fates. “Yes, Dominic! Antica. I haven’t been haunted by a face since — since I was sixteen years
old. It was the face of a young cavalier in the street. He was on horseback, too. He never looked at me, I never saw
him again, and I loved him for — for days and days and days. That was the sort of face he had. And her face is of the
same sort. She had a man’s hat, too, on her head. So high!”

“A man’s hat on her head,” remarked with profound displeasure Dominic, to whom this wonder, at least, of all the
wonders of the earth, was apparently unknown.

“Si. And her face has haunted me. Not so long as that other but more touchingly because I am no longer sixteen and
this is a woman. Yes, I did think of her, I myself was once that age and I, too, had a face of my own to show to the
world, though not so superb. And I, too, didn’t know why I had come into the world any more than she does.”

“And now you know,” Dominic growled softly, with his head still between his hands.

She looked at him for a long time, opened her lips but in the end only sighed lightly.

“And what do you know of her, you who have seen her so well as to be haunted by her face?” I asked.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had answered me with another sigh. For she seemed only to be thinking of
herself and looked not in my direction. But suddenly she roused up.

“Of her?” she repeated in a louder voice. “Why should I talk of another woman? And then she is a great lady.”

At this I could not repress a smile which she detected at once.

“Isn’t she? Well, no, perhaps she isn’t; but you may be sure of one thing, that she is both flesh and shadow more
than any one that I have seen. Keep that well in your mind: She is for no man! She would be vanishing out of their
hands like water that cannot be held.”

I caught my breath. “Inconstant,” I whispered.

“I don’t say that. Maybe too proud, too wilful, too full of pity. Signorino, you don’t know much about women. And
you may learn something yet or you may not; but what you learn from her you will never forget.”

“Not to be held,” I murmured; and she whom the quayside called Madame Leonore closed her outstretched hand before my
face and opened it at once to show its emptiness in illustration of her expressed opinion. Dominic never moved.

I wished good-night to these two and left the cafe for the fresh air and the dark spaciousness of the quays
augmented by all the width of the old Port where between the trails of light the shadows of heavy hulls appeared very
black, merging their outlines in a great confusion. I left behind me the end of the Cannebiere, a wide vista of tall
houses and much-lighted pavements losing itself in the distance with an extinction of both shapes and lights. I slunk
past it with only a side glance and sought the dimness of quiet streets away from the centre of the usual night
gaieties of the town. The dress I wore was just that of a sailor come ashore from some coaster, a thick blue woollen
shirt or rather a sort of jumper with a knitted cap like a tam-o’-shanter worn very much on one side and with a red
tuft of wool in the centre. This was even the reason why I had lingered so long in the cafe. I didn’t want to be
recognized in the streets in that costume and still less to be seen entering the house in the street of the Consuls. At
that hour when the performances were over and all the sensible citizens in their beds I didn’t hesitate to cross the
Place of the Opera. It was dark, the audience had already dispersed. The rare passers-by I met hurrying on their last
affairs of the day paid no attention to me at all. The street of the Consuls I expected to find empty, as usual at that
time of the night. But as I turned a corner into it I overtook three people who must have belonged to the locality. To
me, somehow, they appeared strange. Two girls in dark cloaks walked ahead of a tall man in a top hat. I slowed down,
not wishing to pass them by, the more so that the door of the house was only a few yards distant. But to my intense
surprise those people stopped at it and the man in the top hat, producing a latchkey, let his two companions through,
followed them, and with a heavy slam cut himself off from my astonished self and the rest of mankind.

In the stupid way people have I stood and meditated on the sight, before it occurred to me that this was the most
useless thing to do. After waiting a little longer to let the others get away from the hall I entered in my turn. The
small gas-jet seemed not to have been touched ever since that distant night when Mills and I trod the black-and-white
marble hall for the first time on the heels of Captain Blunt — who lived by his sword. And in the dimness and solitude
which kept no more trace of the three strangers than if they had been the merest ghosts I seemed to hear the ghostly
murmur, Americain, Catholique et gentilhomne. Amer . . . “ Unseen by human eye I ran up the flight of steps
swiftly and on the first floor stepped into my sitting-room of which the door was open . . . “et
gentilhomme.” I tugged at the bell pull and somewhere down below a bell rang as unexpected for Therese as a call from a
ghost.

I had no notion whether Therese could hear me. I seemed to remember that she slept in any bed that happened to be
vacant. For all I knew she might have been asleep in mine. As I had no matches on me I waited for a while in the dark.
The house was perfectly still. Suddenly without the slightest preliminary sound light fell into the room and Therese
stood in the open door with a candlestick in her hand.

She had on her peasant brown skirt. The rest of her was concealed in a black shawl which covered her head, her
shoulders, arms, and elbows completely, down to her waist. The hand holding the candle protruded from that envelope
which the other invisible hand clasped together under her very chin. And her face looked like a face in a painting. She
said at once:

“You startled me, my young Monsieur.”

She addressed me most frequently in that way as though she liked the very word “young.” Her manner was certainly
peasant-like with a sort of plaint in the voice, while the face was that of a serving Sister in some small and rustic
convent.

“I meant to do it,” I said. “I am a very bad person.”

“The young are always full of fun,” she said as if she were gloating over the idea. “It is very pleasant.”

“But you are very brave,” I chaffed her, “for you didn’t expect a ring, and after all it might have been the devil
who pulled the bell.”

“It might have been. But a poor girl like me is not afraid of the devil. I have a pure heart. I have been to
confession last evening. No. But it might have been an assassin that pulled the bell ready to kill a poor harmless
woman. This is a very lonely street. What could prevent you to kill me now and then walk out again free as air?”

While she was talking like this she had lighted the gas and with the last words she glided through the bedroom door
leaving me thunderstruck at the unexpected character of her thoughts.

I couldn’t know that there had been during my absence a case of atrocious murder which had affected the imagination
of the whole town; and though Therese did not read the papers (which she imagined to be full of impieties and
immoralities invented by godless men) yet if she spoke at all with her kind, which she must have done at least in
shops, she could not have helped hearing of it. It seems that for some days people could talk of nothing else. She
returned gliding from the bedroom hermetically sealed in her black shawl just as she had gone in, with the protruding
hand holding the lighted candle and relieved my perplexity as to her morbid turn of mind by telling me something of the
murder story in a strange tone of indifference even while referring to its most horrible features. “That’s what carnal
sin (peche de chair) leads to,” she commented severely and passed her tongue over her thin lips. “And then the devil
furnishes the occasion.”

“I can’t imagine the devil inciting me to murder you, Therese,” I said, “and I didn’t like that ready way you took
me for an example, as it were. I suppose pretty near every lodger might be a potential murderer, but I expected to be
made an exception.”

With the candle held a little below her face, with that face of one tone and without relief she looked more than
ever as though she had come out of an old, cracked, smoky painting, the subject of which was altogether beyond human
conception. And she only compressed her lips.

“All right,” I said, making myself comfortable on a sofa after pulling off my boots. “I suppose any one is liable to
commit murder all of a sudden. Well, have you got many murderers in the house?”

“And by the by, who is that grey-headed murderer in a tall hat whom I saw shepherding two girls into this
house?”

She put on a candid air in which one could detect a little of her peasant cunning.

“Oh, yes. They are two dancing girls at the Opera, sisters, as different from each other as I and our poor Rita. But
they are both virtuous and that gentleman, their father, is very severe with them. Very severe indeed, poor motherless
things. And it seems to be such a sinful occupation.”

“I bet you make them pay a big rent, Therese. With an occupation like that. . .”

She looked at me with eyes of invincible innocence and began to glide towards the door, so smoothly that the flame
of the candle hardly swayed. “Good-night,” she murmured.

“Good-night, Mademoiselle.”

Then in the very doorway she turned right round as a marionette would turn.

“Oh, you ought to know, my dear young Monsieur, that Mr. Blunt, the dear handsome man, has arrived from Navarre
three days ago or more. Oh,” she added with a priceless air of compunction, “he is such a charming gentleman.”

And the door shut after her.

Chapter 4

That night I passed in a state, mostly open-eyed, I believe, but always on the border between dreams
and waking. The only thing absolutely absent from it was the feeling of rest. The usual sufferings of a youth in love
had nothing to do with it. I could leave her, go away from her, remain away from her, without an added pang or any
augmented consciousness of that torturing sentiment of distance so acute that often it ends by wearing itself out in a
few days. Far or near was all one to me, as if one could never get any further but also never any nearer to her secret:
the state like that of some strange wild faiths that get hold of mankind with the cruel mystic grip of unattainable
perfection, robbing them of both liberty and felicity on earth. A faith presents one with some hope, though. But I had
no hope, and not even desire as a thing outside myself, that would come and go, exhaust or excite. It was in me just
like life was in me; that life of which a popular saying affirms that “it is sweet.” For the general wisdom of mankind
will always stop short on the limit of the formidable.

What is best in a state of brimful, equable suffering is that it does away with the gnawings of petty sensations.
Too far gone to be sensible to hope and desire I was spared the inferior pangs of elation and impatience. Hours with
her or hours without her were all alike, all in her possession! But still there are shades and I will admit that the
hours of that morning were perhaps a little more difficult to get through than the others. I had sent word of my
arrival of course. I had written a note. I had rung the bell. Therese had appeared herself in her brown garb and as
monachal as ever. I had said to her:

“Have this sent off at once.”

She had gazed at the addressed envelope, smiled (I was looking up at her from my desk), and at last took it up with
an effort of sanctimonious repugnance. But she remained with it in her hand looking at me as though she were piously
gloating over something she could read in my face.

“Oh, that Rita, that Rita,” she murmured. “And you, too! Why are you trying, you, too, like the others, to stand
between her and the mercy of God? What’s the good of all this to you? And you such a nice, dear, young gentleman. For
no earthly good only making all the kind saints in heaven angry, and our mother ashamed in her place amongst the
blessed.”

“Mademoiselle Therese,” I said, “vous etes folle.”

I believed she was crazy. She was cunning, too. I added an imperious: “Allez,” and with a strange docility she
glided out without another word. All I had to do then was to get dressed and wait till eleven o’clock.

The hour struck at last. If I could have plunged into a light wave and been transported instantaneously to Dona
Rita’s door it would no doubt have saved me an infinity of pangs too complex for analysis; but as this was impossible I
elected to walk from end to end of that long way. My emotions and sensations were childlike and chaotic inasmuch that
they were very intense and primitive, and that I lay very helpless in their unrelaxing grasp. If one could have kept a
record of one’s physical sensations it would have been a fine collection of absurdities and contradictions. Hardly
touching the ground and yet leaden-footed; with a sinking heart and an excited brain; hot and trembling with a secret
faintness, and yet as firm as a rock and with a sort of indifference to it all, I did reach the door which was
frightfully like any other commonplace door, but at the same time had a fateful character: a few planks put together —
and an awful symbol; not to be approached without awe — and yet coming open in the ordinary way to the ring of the
bell.

It came open. Oh, yes, very much as usual. But in the ordinary course of events the first sight in the hall should
have been the back of the ubiquitous, busy, silent maid hurrying off and already distant. But not at all! She actually
waited for me to enter. I was extremely taken aback and I believe spoke to her for the first time in my life.

“Bonjour, Rose.”

She dropped her dark eyelids over those eyes that ought to have been lustrous but were not, as if somebody had
breathed on them the first thing in the morning. She was a girl without smiles. She shut the door after me, and not
only did that but in the incredible idleness of that morning she, who had never a moment to spare, started helping me
off with my overcoat. It was positively embarrassing from its novelty. While busying herself with those trifles she
murmured without any marked intention:

“Captain Blunt is with Madame.”

This didn’t exactly surprise me. I knew he had come up to town; I only happened to have forgotten his existence for
the moment. I looked at the girl also without any particular intention. But she arrested my movement towards the
dining-room door by a low, hurried, if perfectly unemotional appeal:

“Monsieur George!”

That of course was not my name. It served me then as it will serve for this story. In all sorts of strange places I
was alluded to as “that young gentleman they call Monsieur George.” Orders came from “Monsieur George” to men who
nodded knowingly. Events pivoted about “Monsieur George.” I haven’t the slightest doubt that in the dark and tortuous
streets of the old Town there were fingers pointed at my back: there goes “Monsieur George.” I had been introduced
discreetly to several considerable persons as “Monsieur George.” I had learned to answer to the name quite naturally;
and to simplify matters I was also “Monsieur George” in the street of the Consuls and in the Villa on the Prado. I
verify believe that at that time I had the feeling that the name of George really belonged to me. I waited for what the
girl had to say. I had to wait some time, though during that silence she gave no sign of distress or agitation. It was
for her obviously a moment of reflection. Her lips were compressed a little in a characteristic, capable manner. I
looked at her with a friendliness I really felt towards her slight, unattractive, and dependable person.

“Well,” I said at last, rather amused by this mental hesitation. I never took it for anything else. I was sure it
was not distrust. She appreciated men and things and events solely in relation to Dona Rita’s welfare and safety. And
as to that I believed myself above suspicion. At last she spoke.

“Madame is not happy.” This information was given to me not emotionally but as it were officially. It hadn’t even a
tone of warning. A mere statement. Without waiting to see the effect she opened the dining-room door, not to announce
my name in the usual way but to go in and shut it behind her. In that short moment I heard no voices inside. Not a
sound reached me while the door remained shut; but in a few seconds it came open again and Rose stood aside to let me
pass.

Then I heard something: Dona Rita’s voice raised a little on an impatient note (a very, very rare thing) finishing
some phrase of protest with the words “ . . . Of no consequence.”

I heard them as I would have heard any other words, for she had that kind of voice which carries a long distance.
But the maid’s statement occupied all my mind. “Madame n’est pas heureuse.” It had a dreadful precision . . .
“Not happy. . .” This unhappiness had almost a concrete form — something resembling a horrid bat. I was tired, excited,
and generally overwrought. My head felt empty. What were the appearances of unhappiness? I was still naive enough to
associate them with tears, lamentations, extraordinary attitudes of the body and some sort of facial distortion, all
very dreadful to behold. I didn’t know what I should see; but in what I did see there was nothing startling, at any
rate from that nursery point of view which apparently I had not yet outgrown.

With immense relief the apprehensive child within me beheld Captain Blunt warming his back at the more distant of
the two fireplaces; and as to Dona Rita there was nothing extraordinary in her attitude either, except perhaps that her
hair was all loose about her shoulders. I hadn’t the slightest doubt they had been riding together that morning, but
she, with her impatience of all costume (and yet she could dress herself admirably and wore her dresses triumphantly),
had divested herself of her riding habit and sat cross-legged enfolded in that ample blue robe like a young savage
chieftain in a blanket. It covered her very feet. And before the normal fixity of her enigmatical eyes the smoke of the
cigarette ascended ceremonially, straight up, in a slender spiral.

“How are you,” was the greeting of Captain Blunt with the usual smile which would have been more amiable if his
teeth hadn’t been, just then, clenched quite so tight. How he managed to force his voice through that shining barrier I
could never understand. Dona Rita tapped the couch engagingly by her side but I sat down instead in the armchair nearly
opposite her, which, I imagine, must have been just vacated by Blunt. She inquired with that particular gleam of the
eyes in which there was something immemorial and gay:

“Well?”

“Perfect success.”

“I could hug you.”

At any time her lips moved very little but in this instance the intense whisper of these words seemed to form itself
right in my very heart; not as a conveyed sound but as an imparted emotion vibrating there with an awful intimacy of
delight. And yet it left my heart heavy.

“Oh, yes, for joy,” I said bitterly but very low; “for your Royalist, Legitimist, joy.” Then with that trick of very
precise politeness which I must have caught from Mr. Blunt I added:

“I don’t want to be embraced — for the King.”

And I might have stopped there. But I didn’t. With a perversity which should be forgiven to those who suffer night
and day and are as if drunk with an exalted unhappiness, I went on: “For the sake of an old cast-off glove; for I
suppose a disdained love is not much more than a soiled, flabby thing that finds itself on a private rubbish heap
because it has missed the fire.”

She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips, slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand
years ago in order to fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all women. Not the gross immobility of
a Sphinx proposing roadside riddles but the finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated at the very
source of the passions that have moved men from the dawn of ages.

Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece, had turned away a little from us and his attitude expressed
excellently the detachment of a man who does not want to hear. As a matter of fact, I don’t suppose he could have
heard. He was too far away, our voices were too contained. Moreover, he didn’t want to hear. There could be no doubt
about it; but she addressed him unexpectedly.

“As I was saying to you, Don Juan, I have the greatest difficulty in getting myself, I won’t say understood, but
simply believed.”

No pose of detachment could avail against the warm waves of that voice. He had to hear. After a moment he altered
his position as it were reluctantly, to answer her.

“That’s a difficulty that women generally have.”

“Yet I have always spoken the truth.”

“All women speak the truth,” said Blunt imperturbably. And this annoyed her.

“Where are the men I have deceived?” she cried.

“Yes, where?” said Blunt in a tone of alacrity as though he had been ready to go out and look for them outside.

“No! But show me one. I say — where is he?”

He threw his affectation of detachment to the winds, moved his shoulders slightly, very slightly, made a step nearer
to the couch, and looked down on her with an expression of amused courtesy.

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably nowhere. But if such a man could be found I am certain he would turn out a very stupid
person. You can’t be expected to furnish every one who approaches you with a mind. To expect that would be too much,
even from you who know how to work wonders at such little cost to yourself.”

“To myself,” she repeated in a loud tone.

“Why this indignation? I am simply taking your word for it.”

“Such little cost!” she exclaimed under her breath.

“I mean to your person.”

“Oh, yes,” she murmured, glanced down, as it were upon herself, then added very low: “This body.”

“Well, it is you,” said Blunt with visibly contained irritation. “You don’t pretend it’s somebody else’s. It can’t
be. You haven’t borrowed it. . . . It fits you too well,” he ended between his teeth.

“You take pleasure in tormenting yourself,” she remonstrated, suddenly placated; “and I would be sorry for you if I
didn’t think it’s the mere revolt of your pride. And you know you are indulging your pride at my expense. As to the
rest of it, as to my living, acting, working wonders at a little cost. . . . it has all but killed me
morally. Do you hear? Killed.”

“Oh, you are not dead yet,” he muttered,

“No,” she said with gentle patience. “There is still some feeling left in me; and if it is any satisfaction to you
to know it, you may be certain that I shall be conscious of the last stab.”

He remained silent for a while and then with a polite smile and a movement of the head in my direction he warned
her.

“Our audience will get bored.”

“I am perfectly aware that Monsieur George is here, and that he has been breathing a very different atmosphere from
what he gets in this room. Don’t you find this room extremely confined?” she asked me.

The room was very large but it is a fact that I felt oppressed at that moment. This mysterious quarrel between those
two people, revealing something more close in their intercourse than I had ever before suspected, made me so profoundly
unhappy that I didn’t even attempt to answer. And she continued:

“More space. More air. Give me air, air.” She seized the embroidered edges of her blue robe under her white throat
and made as if to tear them apart, to fling it open on her breast, recklessly, before our eyes. We both remained
perfectly still. Her hands dropped nervelessly by her side. “I envy you, Monsieur George. If I am to go under I should
prefer to be drowned in the sea with the wind on my face. What luck, to feel nothing less than all the world closing
over one’s head!”

A short silence ensued before Mr. Blunt’s drawing-room voice was heard with playful familiarity.

“I have often asked myself whether you weren’t really a very ambitious person, Dona Rita.”

“And I ask myself whether you have any heart.” She was looking straight at him and he gratified her with the usual
cold white flash of his even teeth before he answered.

“Asking yourself? That means that you are really asking me. But why do it so publicly? I mean it. One single,
detached presence is enough to make a public. One alone. Why not wait till he returns to those regions of space and air
— from which he came.”

His particular trick of speaking of any third person as of a lay figure was exasperating. Yet at the moment I did
not know how to resent it, but, in any case, Dona Rita would not have given me time. Without a moment’s hesitation she
cried out:

“I only wish he could take me out there with him.”

For a moment Mr. Blunt’s face became as still as a mask and then instead of an angry it assumed an indulgent
expression. As to me I had a rapid vision of Dominic’s astonishment, awe, and sarcasm which was always as tolerant as
it is possible for sarcasm to be. But what a charming, gentle, gay, and fearless companion she would have made! I
believed in her fearlessness in any adventure that would interest her. It would be a new occasion for me, a new
viewpoint for that faculty of admiration she had awakened in me at sight — at first sight — before she opened her lips
— before she ever turned her eyes on me. She would have to wear some sort of sailor costume, a blue woollen shirt open
at the throat. . . . Dominic’s hooded cloak would envelop her amply, and her face under the black hood would
have a luminous quality, adolescent charm, and an enigmatic expression. The confined space of the little vessel’s
quarterdeck would lend itself to her cross-legged attitudes, and the blue sea would balance gently her characteristic
immobility that seemed to hide thoughts as old and profound as itself. As restless, too — perhaps.

But the picture I had in my eye, coloured and simple like an illustration to a nursery-book tale of two venturesome
children’s escapade, was what fascinated me most. Indeed I felt that we two were like children under the gaze of a man
of the world — who lived by his sword. And I said recklessly:

“Yes, you ought to come along with us for a trip. You would see a lot of things for yourself.”

Mr. Blunt’s expression had grown even more indulgent if that were possible. Yet there was something ineradicably
ambiguous about that man. I did not like the indefinable tone in which he observed:

“You are perfectly reckless in what you say, Dona Rita. It has become a habit with you of late.”

“While with you reserve is a second nature, Don Juan.”

This was uttered with the gentlest, almost tender, irony. Mr. Blunt waited a while before he said:

“Certainly. . . . Would you have liked me to be otherwise?”

She extended her hand to him on a sudden impulse.

“Forgive me! I may have been unjust, and you may only have been loyal. The falseness is not in us. The fault is in
life itself, I suppose. I have been always frank with you.”

“And I obedient,” he said, bowing low over her hand. He turned away, paused to look at me for some time and finally
gave me the correct sort of nod. But he said nothing and went out, or rather lounged out with his worldly manner of
perfect ease under all conceivable circumstances. With her head lowered Dona Rita watched him till he actually shut the
door behind him. I was facing her and only heard the door close.

“Don’t stare at me,” were the first words she said.

It was difficult to obey that request. I didn’t know exactly where to look, while I sat facing her. So I got up,
vaguely full of goodwill, prepared even to move off as far as the window, when she commanded:

“Don’t turn your back on me.”

I chose to understand it symbolically.

“You know very well I could never do that. I couldn’t. Not even if I wanted to.” And I added: “It’s too late
now.”

“Well, then, sit down. Sit down on this couch.”

I sat down on the couch. Unwillingly? Yes. I was at that stage when all her words, all her gestures, all her
silences were a heavy trial to me, put a stress on my resolution, on that fidelity to myself and to her which lay like
a leaden weight on my untried heart. But I didn’t sit down very far away from her, though that soft and billowy couch
was big enough, God knows! No, not very far from her. Self-control, dignity, hopelessness itself, have their limits.
The halo of her tawny hair stirred as I let myself drop by her side. Whereupon she flung one arm round my neck, leaned
her temple against my shoulder and began to sob; but that I could only guess from her slight, convulsive movements
because in our relative positions I could only see the mass of her tawny hair brushed back, yet with a halo of escaped
hair which as I bent my head over her tickled my lips, my cheek, in a maddening manner.

We sat like two venturesome children in an illustration to a tale, scared by their adventure. But not for long. As I
instinctively, yet timidly, sought for her other hand I felt a tear strike the back of mine, big and heavy as if fallen
from a great height. It was too much for me. I must have given a nervous start. At once I heard a murmur: “You had
better go away now.”

I withdrew myself gently from under the light weight of her head, from this unspeakable bliss and inconceivable
misery, and had the absurd impression of leaving her suspended in the air. And I moved away on tiptoe.

Like an inspired blind man led by Providence I found my way out of the room but really I saw nothing, till in the
hall the maid appeared by enchantment before me holding up my overcoat. I let her help me into it. And then (again as
if by enchantment) she had my hat in her hand.

“No. Madame isn’t happy,” I whispered to her distractedly.

She let me take my hat out of her hand and while I was putting it on my head I heard an austere whisper:

“Madame should listen to her heart.”

Austere is not the word; it was almost freezing, this unexpected, dispassionate rustle of words. I had to repress a
shudder, and as coldly as herself I murmured:

“She has done that once too often.”

Rose was standing very close to me and I caught distinctly the note of scorn in her indulgent compassion.

“Oh, that! . . . Madame is like a child.” It was impossible to get the bearing of that utterance from that
girl who, as Dona Rita herself had told me, was the most taciturn of human beings; and yet of all human beings the one
nearest to herself. I seized her head in my hands and turning up her face I looked straight down into her black eyes
which should have been lustrous. Like a piece of glass breathed upon they reflected no light, revealed no depths, and
under my ardent gaze remained tarnished, misty, unconscious.

“Will Monsieur kindly let me go. Monsieur shouldn’t play the child, either.” (I let her go.) “Madame could have the
world at her feet. Indeed she has it there only she doesn’t care for it.”

How talkative she was, this maid with unsealed lips! For some reason or other this last statement of hers brought me
immense comfort.

“Yes?” I whispered breathlessly.

“Yes! But in that case what’s the use of living in fear and torment?” she went on, revealing a little more of
herself to my astonishment. She opened the door for me and added:

“Those that don’t care to stoop ought at least make themselves happy.”

I turned in the very doorway: “There is something which prevents that?” I suggested.

“To be sure there is. Bonjour, Monsieur.”

PART FOUR

Chapter 1

“Such a charming lady in a grey silk dress and a hand as white as snow. She looked at me through
such funny glasses on the end of a long handle. A very great lady but her voice was as kind as the voice of a saint. I
have never seen anything like that. She made me feel so timid.”

The voice uttering these words was the voice of Therese and I looked at her from a bed draped heavily in brown silk
curtains fantastically looped up from ceiling to floor. The glow of a sunshiny day was toned down by closed jalousies
to a mere transparency of darkness. In this thin medium Therese’s form appeared flat, without detail, as if cut out of
black paper. It glided towards the window and with a click and a scrape let in the full flood of light which smote my
aching eyeballs painfully.

In truth all that night had been the abomination of desolation to me. After wrestling with my thoughts, if the acute
consciousness of a woman’s existence may be called a thought, I had apparently dropped off to sleep only to go on
wrestling with a nightmare, a senseless and terrifying dream of being in bonds which, even after waking, made me feel
powerless in all my limbs. I lay still, suffering acutely from a renewed sense of existence, unable to lift an arm, and
wondering why I was not at sea, how long I had slept, how long Therese had been talking before her voice had reached me
in that purgatory of hopeless longing and unanswerable questions to which I was condemned.

It was Therese’s habit to begin talking directly she entered the room with the tray of morning coffee. This was her
method for waking me up. I generally regained the consciousness of the external world on some pious phrase asserting
the spiritual comfort of early mass, or on angry lamentations about the unconscionable rapacity of the dealers in fish
and vegetables; for after mass it was Therese’s practice to do the marketing for the house. As a matter of fact the
necessity of having to pay, to actually give money to people, infuriated the pious Therese. But the matter of this
morning’s speech was so extraordinary that it might have been the prolongation of a nightmare: a man in bonds having to
listen to weird and unaccountable speeches against which, he doesn’t know why, his very soul revolts.

In sober truth my soul remained in revolt though I was convinced that I was no longer dreaming. I watched Therese
coming away from the window with that helpless dread a man bound hand and foot may be excused to feel. For in such a
situation even the absurd may appear ominous. She came up close to the bed and folding her hands meekly in front of her
turned her eyes up to the ceiling.

“If I had been her daughter she couldn’t have spoken more softly to me,” she said sentimentally.

I made a great effort to speak.

“Mademoiselle Therese, you are raving.”

“She addressed me as Mademoiselle, too, so nicely. I was struck with veneration for her white hair but her face,
believe me, my dear young Monsieur, has not so many wrinkles as mine.”

She compressed her lips with an angry glance at me as if I could help her wrinkles, then she sighed.

“God sends wrinkles, but what is our face?” she digressed in a tone of great humility. “We shall have glorious faces
in Paradise. But meantime God has permitted me to preserve a smooth heart.”

“Are you going to keep on like this much longer?” I fairly shouted at her. “What are you talking about?”

“I am talking about the sweet old lady who came in a carriage. Not a fiacre. I can tell a fiacre. In a little
carriage shut in with glass all in front. I suppose she is very rich. The carriage was very shiny outside and all
beautiful grey stuff inside. I opened the door to her myself. She got out slowly like a queen. I was struck all of a
heap. Such a shiny beautiful little carriage. There were blue silk tassels inside, beautiful silk tassels.”

Obviously Therese had been very much impressed by a brougham, though she didn’t know the name for it. Of all the
town she knew nothing but the streets which led to a neighbouring church frequented only by the poorer classes and the
humble quarter around, where she did her marketing. Besides, she was accustomed to glide along the walls with her eyes
cast down; for her natural boldness would never show itself through that nun-like mien except when bargaining, if only
on a matter of threepence. Such a turn-out had never been presented to her notice before. The traffic in the street of
the Consuls was mostly pedestrian and far from fashionable. And anyhow Therese never looked out of the window. She
lurked in the depths of the house like some kind of spider that shuns attention. She used to dart at one from some dark
recesses which I never explored.

Yet it seemed to me that she exaggerated her raptures for some reason or other. With her it was very difficult to
distinguish between craft and innocence.

“Do you mean to say,” I asked suspiciously, “that an old lady wants to hire an apartment here? I hope you told her
there was no room, because, you know, this house is not exactly the thing for venerable old ladies.”

“Don’t make me angry, my dear young Monsieur. I have been to confession this morning. Aren’t you comfortable? Isn’t
the house appointed richly enough for anybody?”

That girl with a peasant-nun’s face had never seen the inside of a house other than some half-ruined caserio in her
native hills.

I pointed out to her that this was not a matter of splendour or comfort but of “convenances.” She pricked up her
ears at that word which probably she had never heard before; but with woman’s uncanny intuition I believe she
understood perfectly what I meant. Her air of saintly patience became so pronounced that with my own poor intuition I
perceived that she was raging at me inwardly. Her weather-tanned complexion, already affected by her confined life,
took on an extraordinary clayey aspect which reminded me of a strange head painted by El Greco which my friend Prax had
hung on one of his walls and used to rail at; yet not without a certain respect.

Therese, with her hands still meekly folded about her waist, had mastered the feelings of anger so unbecoming to a
person whose sins had been absolved only about three hours before, and asked me with an insinuating softness whether
she wasn’t an honest girl enough to look after any old lady belonging to a world which after all was sinful. She
reminded me that she had kept house ever since she was “so high” for her uncle the priest: a man well-known for his
saintliness in a large district extending even beyond Pampeluna. The character of a house depended upon the person who
ruled it. She didn’t know what impenitent wretches had been breathing within these walls in the time of that godless
and wicked man who had planted every seed of perdition in “our Rita’s” ill-disposed heart. But he was dead and she,
Therese, knew for certain that wickedness perished utterly, because of God’s anger (la colere du bon Dieu). She would
have no hesitation in receiving a bishop, if need be, since “our, Rita,” with her poor, wretched, unbelieving heart,
had nothing more to do with the house.

All this came out of her like an unctuous trickle of some acrid oil. The low, voluble delivery was enough by itself
to compel my attention.

“You think you know your sister’s heart,” I asked.

She made small eyes at me to discover if I was angry. She seemed to have an invincible faith in the virtuous
dispositions of young men. And as I had spoken in measured tones and hadn’t got red in the face she let herself go.

“Black, my dear young Monsieur. Black. I always knew it. Uncle, poor saintly man, was too holy to take notice of
anything. He was too busy with his thoughts to listen to anything I had to say to him. For instance as to her
shamelessness. She was always ready to run half naked about the hills . . . ”

“Yes. After your goats. All day long. Why didn’t you mend her frocks?”

“Oh, you know about the goats. My dear young Monsieur, I could never tell when she would fling over her pretended
sweetness and put her tongue out at me. Did she tell you about a boy, the son of pious and rich parents, whom she tried
to lead astray into the wildness of thoughts like her own, till the poor dear child drove her off because she outraged
his modesty? I saw him often with his parents at Sunday mass. The grace of God preserved him and made him quite a
gentleman in Paris. Perhaps it will touch Rita’s heart, too, some day. But she was awful then. When I wouldn’t listen
to her complaints she would say: ‘All right, sister, I would just as soon go clothed in rain and wind.’ And such a bag
of bones, too, like the picture of a devil’s imp. Ah, my dear young Monsieur, you don’t know how wicked her heart is.
You aren’t bad enough for that yourself. I don’t believe you are evil at all in your innocent little heart. I never
heard you jeer at holy things. You are only thoughtless. For instance, I have never seen you make the sign of the cross
in the morning. Why don’t you make a practice of crossing yourself directly you open your eyes. It’s a very good thing.
It keeps Satan off for the day.”

She proffered that advice in a most matter-of-fact tone as if it were a precaution against a cold, compressed her
lips, then returning to her fixed idea, “But the house is mine,” she insisted very quietly with an accent which made me
feel that Satan himself would never manage to tear it out of her hands.

“And so I told the great lady in grey. I told her that my sister had given it to me and that surely God would not
let her take it away again.”

“You told that grey-headed lady, an utter stranger! You are getting more crazy every day. You have neither good
sense nor good feeling, Mademoiselle Therese, let me tell you. Do you talk about your sister to the butcher and the
greengrocer, too? A downright savage would have more restraint. What’s your object? What do you expect from it? What
pleasure do you get from it? Do you think you please God by abusing your sister? What do you think you are?”

“A poor lone girl amongst a lot of wicked people. Do you think I wanted to go forth amongst those abominations? it’s
that poor sinful Rita that wouldn’t let me be where I was, serving a holy man, next door to a church, and sure of my
share of Paradise. I simply obeyed my uncle. It’s he who told me to go forth and attempt to save her soul, bring her
back to us, to a virtuous life. But what would be the good of that? She is given over to worldly, carnal thoughts. Of
course we are a good family and my uncle is a great man in the country, but where is the reputable farmer or
God-fearing man of that kind that would dare to bring such a girl into his house to his mother and sisters. No, let her
give her ill-gotten wealth up to the deserving and devote the rest of her life to repentance.”

She uttered these righteous reflections and presented this programme for the salvation of her sister’s soul in a
reasonable convinced tone which was enough to give goose flesh to one all over.

“Mademoiselle Therese,” I said, “you are nothing less than a monster.”

She received that true expression of my opinion as though I had given her a sweet of a particularly delicious kind.
She liked to be abused. It pleased her to be called names. I did let her have that satisfaction to her heart’s content.
At last I stopped because I could do no more, unless I got out of bed to beat her. I have a vague notion that she would
have liked that, too, but I didn’t try. After I had stopped she waited a little before she raised her downcast
eyes.

“You are a dear, ignorant, flighty young gentleman,” she said. “Nobody can tell what a cross my sister is to me
except the good priest in the church where I go every day.”

“And the mysterious lady in grey,” I suggested sarcastically.

“Such a person might have guessed it,” answered Therese, seriously, “but I told her nothing except that this house
had been given me in full property by our Rita. And I wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t spoken to me of my sister
first. I can’t tell too many people about that. One can’t trust Rita. I know she doesn’t fear God but perhaps human
respect may keep her from taking this house back from me. If she doesn’t want me to talk about her to people why
doesn’t she give me a properly stamped piece of paper for it?”

She said all this rapidly in one breath and at the end had a sort of anxious gasp which gave me the opportunity to
voice my surprise. It was immense.

“That lady, the strange lady, spoke to you of your sister first!” I cried.

“The lady asked me, after she had been in a little time, whether really this house belonged to Madame de Lastaola.
She had been so sweet and kind and condescending that I did not mind humiliating my spirit before such a good
Christian. I told her that I didn’t know how the poor sinner in her mad blindness called herself, but that this house
had been given to me truly enough by my sister. She raised her eyebrows at that but she looked at me at the same time
so kindly, as much as to say, ‘Don’t trust much to that, my dear girl,’ that I couldn’t help taking up her hand, soft
as down, and kissing it. She took it away pretty quick but she was not offended. But she only said, ‘That’s very
generous on your sister’s part,’ in a way that made me run cold all over. I suppose all the world knows our Rita for a
shameless girl. It was then that the lady took up those glasses on a long gold handle and looked at me through them
till I felt very much abashed. She said to me, ‘There is nothing to be unhappy about. Madame de Lastaola is a very
remarkable person who has done many surprising things. She is not to be judged like other people and as far as I know
she has never wronged a single human being . . . .’ That put heart into me, I can tell you; and the lady told
me then not to disturb her son. She would wait till he woke up. She knew he was a bad sleeper. I said to her: ‘Why, I
can hear the dear sweet gentleman this moment having his bath in the fencing-room,’ and I took her into the studio.
They are there now and they are going to have their lunch together at twelve o’clock.”

“Why on earth didn’t you tell me at first that the lady was Mrs. Blunt?”

“Didn’t I? I thought I did,” she said innocently. I felt a sudden desire to get out of that house, to fly from the
reinforced Blunt element which was to me so oppressive.

“I want to get up and dress, Mademoiselle Therese,” I said.

She gave a slight start and without looking at me again glided out of the room, the many folds of her brown skirt
remaining undisturbed as she moved.

I looked at my watch; it was ten o’clock. Therese had been late with my coffee. The delay was clearly caused by the
unexpected arrival of Mr. Blunt’s mother, which might or might not have been expected by her son. The existence of
those Blunts made me feel uncomfortable in a peculiar way as though they had been the denizens of another planet with a
subtly different point of view and something in the intelligence which was bound to remain unknown to me. It caused in
me a feeling of inferiority which I intensely disliked. This did not arise from the actual fact that those people
originated in another continent. I had met Americans before. And the Blunts were Americans. But so little! That was the
trouble. Captain Blunt might have been a Frenchman as far as languages, tones, and manners went. But you could not have
mistaken him for one . . . . Why? You couldn’t tell. It was something indefinite. It occurred to me while I
was towelling hard my hair, face, and the back of my neck, that I could not meet J. K. Blunt on equal terms in any
relation of life except perhaps arms in hand, and in preference with pistols, which are less intimate, acting at a
distance — but arms of some sort. For physically his life, which could be taken away from him, was exactly like mine,
held on the same terms and of the same vanishing quality.

I would have smiled at my absurdity if all, even the most intimate, vestige of gaiety had not been crushed out of my
heart by the intolerable weight of my love for Rita. It crushed, it overshadowed, too, it was immense. If there were
any smiles in the world (which I didn’t believe) I could not have seen them. Love for Rita . . . if it was
love, I asked myself despairingly, while I brushed my hair before a glass. It did not seem to have any sort of
beginning as far as I could remember. A thing the origin of which you cannot trace cannot be seriously considered. It
is an illusion. Or perhaps mine was a physical state, some sort of disease akin to melancholia which is a form of
insanity? The only moments of relief I could remember were when she and I would start squabbling like two passionate
infants in a nursery, over anything under heaven, over a phrase, a word sometimes, in the great light of the glass
rotunda, disregarding the quiet entrances and exits of the ever-active Rose, in great bursts of voices and peals of
laughter . . . .

I felt tears come into my eyes at the memory of her laughter, the true memory of the senses almost more penetrating
than the reality itself. It haunted me. All that appertained to her haunted me with the same awful intimacy, her whole
form in the familiar pose, her very substance in its colour and texture, her eyes, her lips, the gleam of her teeth,
the tawny mist of her hair, the smoothness of her forehead, the faint scent that she used, the very shape, feel, and
warmth of her high-heeled slipper that would sometimes in the heat of the discussion drop on the floor with a crash,
and which I would (always in the heat of the discussion) pick up and toss back on the couch without ceasing to argue.
And besides being haunted by what was Rita on earth I was haunted also by her waywardness, her gentleness and her
flame, by that which the high gods called Rita when speaking of her amongst themselves. Oh, yes, certainly I was
haunted by her but so was her sister Therese — who was crazy. It proved nothing. As to her tears, since I had not
caused them, they only aroused my indignation. To put her head on my shoulder, to weep these strange tears, was nothing
short of an outrageous liberty. It was a mere emotional trick. She would have just as soon leaned her head against the
over-mantel of one of those tall, red granite chimney-pieces in order to weep comfortably. And then when she had no
longer any need of support she dispensed with it by simply telling me to go away. How convenient! The request had
sounded pathetic, almost sacredly so, but then it might have been the exhibition of the coolest possible impudence.
With her one could not tell. Sorrow, indifference, tears, smiles, all with her seemed to have a hidden meaning. Nothing
could be trusted . . . Heavens! Am I as crazy as Therese I asked myself with a passing chill of fear, while
occupied in equalizing the ends of my neck-tie.

I felt suddenly that “this sort of thing” would kill me. The definition of the cause was vague, but the thought
itself was no mere morbid artificiality of sentiment but a genuine conviction. “That sort of thing” was what I would
have to die from. It wouldn’t be from the innumerable doubts. Any sort of certitude would be also deadly. It wouldn’t
be from a stab — a kiss would kill me as surely. It would not be from a frown or from any particular word or any
particular act — but from having to bear them all, together and in succession — from having to live with “that sort of
thing.” About the time I finished with my neck-tie I had done with life too. I absolutely did not care because I
couldn’t tell whether, mentally and physically, from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet — whether I was more
weary or unhappy.

And now my toilet was finished, my occupation was gone. An immense distress descended upon me. It has been observed
that the routine of daily life, that arbitrary system of trifles, is a great moral support. But my toilet was finished,
I had nothing more to do of those things consecrated by usage and which leave you no option. The exercise of any kind
of volition by a man whose consciousness is reduced to the sensation that he is being killed by “that sort of thing”
cannot be anything but mere trifling with death, an insincere pose before himself. I wasn’t capable of it. It was then
that I discovered that being killed by “that sort of thing,” I mean the absolute conviction of it, was, so to speak,
nothing in itself. The horrible part was the waiting. That was the cruelty, the tragedy, the bitterness of it. “Why the
devil don’t I drop dead now?” I asked myself peevishly, taking a clean handkerchief out of the drawer and stuffing it
in my pocket.

This was absolutely the last thing, the last ceremony of an imperative rite. I was abandoned to myself now and it
was terrible. Generally I used to go out, walk down to the port, take a look at the craft I loved with a sentiment that
was extremely complex, being mixed up with the image of a woman; perhaps go on board, not because there was anything
for me to do there but just for nothing, for happiness, simply as a man will sit contented in the companionship of the
beloved object. For lunch I had the choice of two places, one Bohemian, the other select, even aristocratic, where I
had still my reserved table in the petit salon, up the white staircase. In both places I had friends who treated my
erratic appearances with discretion, in one case tinged with respect, in the other with a certain amused tolerance. I
owed this tolerance to the most careless, the most confirmed of those Bohemians (his beard had streaks of grey amongst
its many other tints) who, once bringing his heavy hand down on my shoulder, took my defence against the charge of
being disloyal and even foreign to that milieu of earnest visions taking beautiful and revolutionary shapes in the
smoke of pipes, in the jingle of glasses.

“That fellow (ce garcon) is a primitive nature, but he may be an artist in a sense. He has broken away from his
conventions. He is trying to put a special vibration and his own notion of colour into his life; and perhaps even to
give it a modelling according to his own ideas. And for all you know he may be on the track of a masterpiece; but
observe: if it happens to be one nobody will see it. It can be only for himself. And even he won’t be able to see it in
its completeness except on his death-bed. There is something fine in that.”

I had blushed with pleasure; such fine ideas had never entered my head. But there was something fine.
. . . How far all this seemed! How mute and how still! What a phantom he was, that man with a beard of at
least seven tones of brown. And those shades of the other kind such as Baptiste with the shaven diplomatic face, the
maitre d’hotel in charge of the petit salon, taking my hat and stick from me with a deferential remark: “Monsieur is
not very often seen nowadays.” And those other well-groomed heads raised and nodding at my passage — “Bonjour.”
“Bonjour” — following me with interested eyes; these young X.s and Z.s, low-toned, markedly discreet, lounging up to my
table on their way out with murmurs: “Are you well?” — “Will one see you anywhere this evening?” — not from curiosity,
God forbid, but just from friendliness; and passing on almost without waiting for an answer. What had I to do with
them, this elegant dust, these moulds of provincial fashion?

I also often lunched with Dona Rita without invitation. But that was now unthinkable. What had I to do with a woman
who allowed somebody else to make her cry and then with an amazing lack of good feeling did her offensive weeping on my
shoulder? Obviously I could have nothing to do with her. My five minutes’ meditation in the middle of the bedroom came
to an end without even a sigh. The dead don’t sigh, and for all practical purposes I was that, except for the final
consummation, the growing cold, the rigor mortis — that blessed state! With measured steps I crossed the landing to my
sitting-room.

Chapter 2

The windows of that room gave out on the street of the Consuls which as usual was silent. And the
house itself below me and above me was soundless, perfectly still. In general the house was quiet, dumbly quiet,
without resonances of any sort, something like what one would imagine the interior of a convent would be. I suppose it
was very solidly built. Yet that morning I missed in the stillness that feeling of security and peace which ought to
have been associated with it. It is, I believe, generally admitted that the dead are glad to be at rest. But I wasn’t
at rest. What was wrong with that silence? There was something incongruous in that peace. What was it that had got into
that stillness? Suddenly I remembered: the mother of Captain Blunt.

Why had she come all the way from Paris? And why should I bother my head about it? H’m — the Blunt atmosphere, the
reinforced Blunt vibration stealing through the walls, through the thick walls and the almost more solid stillness.
Nothing to me, of course — the movements of Mme. Blunt, mere. It was maternal affection which had brought her south by
either the evening or morning Rapide, to take anxious stock of the ravages of that insomnia. Very good thing, insomnia,
for a cavalry officer perpetually on outpost duty, a real godsend, so to speak; but on leave a truly devilish condition
to be in.

The above sequence of thoughts was entirely unsympathetic and it was followed by a feeling of satisfaction that I,
at any rate, was not suffering from insomnia. I could always sleep in the end. In the end. Escape into a nightmare.
Wouldn’t he revel in that if he could! But that wasn’t for him. He had to toss about open-eyed all night and get up
weary, weary. But oh, wasn’t I weary, too, waiting for a sleep without dreams.

I heard the door behind me open. I had been standing with my face to the window and, I declare, not knowing what I
was looking at across the road — the Desert of Sahara or a wall of bricks, a landscape of rivers and forests or only
the Consulate of Paraguay. But I had been thinking, apparently, of Mr. Blunt with such intensity that when I saw him
enter the room it didn’t really make much difference. When I turned about the door behind him was already shut. He
advanced towards me, correct, supple, hollow-eyed, and smiling; and as to his costume ready to go out except for the
old shooting jacket which he must have affectioned particularly, for he never lost any time in getting into it at every
opportunity. Its material was some tweed mixture; it had gone inconceivably shabby, it was shrunk from old age, it was
ragged at the elbows; but any one could see at a glance that it had been made in London by a celebrated tailor, by a
distinguished specialist. Blunt came towards me in all the elegance of his slimness and affirming in every line of his
face and body, in the correct set of his shoulders and the careless freedom of his movements, the superiority, the
inexpressible superiority, the unconscious, the unmarked, the not-to-be-described, and even not-to-be-caught,
superiority of the naturally born and the perfectly finished man of the world, over the simple young man. He was
smiling, easy, correct, perfectly delightful, fit to kill

He had come to ask me, if I had no other engagement, to lunch with him and his mother in about an hour’s time. He
did it in a most degage tone. His mother had given him a surprise. The completest . . . The foundation of his
mother’s psychology was her delightful unexpectedness. She could never let things be (this in a peculiar tone which he
checked at once) and he really would take it very kindly of me if I came to break the tete-e-tete for a while (that is
if I had no other engagement. Flash of teeth). His mother was exquisitely and tenderly absurd. She had taken it into
her head that his health was endangered in some way. And when she took anything into her head . . . Perhaps I
might find something to say which would reassure her. His mother had two long conversations with Mills on his passage
through Paris and had heard of me (I knew how that thick man could speak of people, he interjected ambiguously) and his
mother, with an insatiable curiosity for anything that was rare (filially humorous accent here and a softer flash of
teeth), was very anxious to have me presented to her (courteous intonation, but no teeth). He hoped I wouldn’t mind if
she treated me a little as an “interesting young man.” His mother had never got over her seventeenth year, and the
manner of the spoilt beauty of at least three counties at the back of the Carolinas. That again got overlaid by the
sans-facon of a grande dame of the Second Empire.

I accepted the invitation with a worldly grin and a perfectly just intonation, because I really didn’t care what I
did. I only wondered vaguely why that fellow required all the air in the room for himself. There did not seem enough
left to go down my throat. I didn’t say that I would come with pleasure or that I would be delighted, but I said that I
would come. He seemed to forget his tongue in his head, put his hands in his pockets and moved about vaguely. “I am a
little nervous this morning,” he said in French, stopping short and looking me straight in the eyes. His own were deep
sunk, dark, fatal. I asked with some malice, that no one could have detected in my intonation, “How’s that
sleeplessness?”

He muttered through his teeth, “Mal. Je ne dors plus.” He moved off to stand at the window with his back to the
room. I sat down on a sofa that was there and put my feet up, and silence took possession of the room.

“Isn’t this street ridiculous?” said Blunt suddenly, and crossing the room rapidly waved his hand to me, “A bientot
donc,” and was gone. He had seared himself into my mind. I did not understand him nor his mother then; which made them
more impressive; but I have discovered since that those two figures required no mystery to make them memorable. Of
course it isn’t every day that one meets a mother that lives by her wits and a son that lives by his sword, but there
was a perfect finish about their ambiguous personalities which is not to be met twice in a life-time. I shall never
forget that grey dress with ample skirts and long corsage yet with infinite style, the ancient as if ghostly beauty of
outlines, the black lace, the silver hair, the harmonious, restrained movements of those white, soft hands like the
hands of a queen — or an abbess; and in the general fresh effect of her person the brilliant eyes like two stars with
the calm reposeful way they had of moving on and off one, as if nothing in the world had the right to veil itself
before their once sovereign beauty. Captain Blunt with smiling formality introduced me by name, adding with a certain
relaxation of the formal tone the comment: “The Monsieur George! whose fame you tell me has reached even Paris.” Mrs.
Blunt’s reception of me, glance, tones, even to the attitude of the admirably corseted figure, was most friendly,
approaching the limit of half-familiarity. I had the feeling that I was beholding in her a captured ideal. No common
experience! But I didn’t care. It was very lucky perhaps for me that in a way I was like a very sick man who has yet
preserved all his lucidity. I was not even wondering to myself at what on earth I was doing there. She breathed out:
“Comme c’est romantique,” at large to the dusty studio as it were; then pointing to a chair at her right hand, and
bending slightly towards me she said:

“I have heard this name murmured by pretty lips in more than one royalist salon.”

I didn’t say anything to that ingratiating speech. I had only an odd thought that she could not have had such a
figure, nothing like it, when she was seventeen and wore snowy muslin dresses on the family plantation in South
Carolina, in pre-abolition days.

“You won’t mind, I am sure, if an old woman whose heart is still young elects to call you by it,” she declared.

“Certainly, Madame. It will be more romantic,” I assented with a respectful bow.

She dropped a calm: “Yes — there is nothing like romance while one is young. So I will call you Monsieur George,”
she paused and then added, “I could never get old,” in a matter-of-fact final tone as one would remark, “I could never
learn to swim,” and I had the presence of mind to say in a tone to match, “C’est evident, Madame.” It was evident. She
couldn’t get old; and across the table her thirty-year-old son who couldn’t get sleep sat listening with courteous
detachment and the narrowest possible line of white underlining his silky black moustache.

“Your services are immensely appreciated,” she said with an amusing touch of importance as of a great official lady.
“Immensely appreciated by people in a position to understand the great significance of the Carlist movement in the
South. There it has to combat anarchism, too. I who have lived through the Commune. . .”

Therese came in with a dish, and for the rest of the lunch the conversation so well begun drifted amongst the most
appalling inanities of the religious-royalist-legitimist order. The ears of all the Bourbons in the world must have
been burning. Mrs. Blunt seemed to have come into personal contact with a good many of them and the marvellous
insipidity of her recollections was astonishing to my inexperience. I looked at her from time to time thinking: She has
seen slavery, she has seen the Commune, she knows two continents, she has seen a civil war, the glory of the Second
Empire, the horrors of two sieges; she has been in contact with marked personalities, with great events, she has lived
on her wealth, on her personality, and there she is with her plumage unruffled, as glossy as ever, unable to get old:—
a sort of Phoenix free from the slightest signs of ashes and dust, all complacent amongst those inanities as if there
had been nothing else in the world. In my youthful haste I asked myself what sort of airy soul she had.

At last Therese put a dish of fruit on the table, a small collection of oranges, raisins, and nuts. No doubt she had
bought that lot very cheap and it did not look at all inviting. Captain Blunt jumped up. “My mother can’t stand tobacco
smoke. Will you keep her company, mon cher, while I take a turn with a cigar in that ridiculous garden. The brougham
from the hotel will be here very soon.”

He left us in the white flash of an apologetic grin. Almost directly he reappeared, visible from head to foot
through the glass side of the studio, pacing up and down the central path of that “ridiculous” garden: for its elegance
and its air of good breeding the most remarkable figure that I have ever seen before or since. He had changed his coat.
Madame Blunt mere lowered the long-handled glasses through which she had been contemplating him with an appraising,
absorbed expression which had nothing maternal in it. But what she said to me was:

“You understand my anxieties while he is campaigning with the King.”

She had spoken in French and she had used the expression “mes transes” but for all the rest, intonation, bearing,
solemnity, she might have been referring to one of the Bourbons. I am sure that not a single one of them looked half as
aristocratic as her son.

“I understand perfectly, Madame. But then that life is so romantic.”

“Hundreds of young men belonging to a certain sphere are doing that,” she said very distinctly, “only their case is
different. They have their positions, their families to go back to; but we are different. We are exiles, except of
course for the ideals, the kindred spirit, the friendships of old standing we have in France. Should my son come out
unscathed he has no one but me and I have no one but him. I have to think of his life. Mr. Mills (what a distinguished
mind that is!) has reassured me as to my son’s health. But he sleeps very badly, doesn’t he?”

I murmured something affirmative in a doubtful tone and she remarked quaintly, with a certain curtness, “It’s so
unnecessary, this worry! The unfortunate position of an exile has its advantages. At a certain height of social
position (wealth has got nothing to do with it, we have been ruined in a most righteous cause), at a certain
established height one can disregard narrow prejudices. You see examples in the aristocracies of all the countries. A
chivalrous young American may offer his life for a remote ideal which yet may belong to his familial tradition. We, in
our great country, have every sort of tradition. But a young man of good connections and distinguished relations must
settle down some day, dispose of his life.”

“No doubt, Madame,” I said, raising my eyes to the figure outside — “Americain, Catholique et gentilhomme” — walking
up and down the path with a cigar which he was not smoking. “For myself, I don’t know anything about those necessities.
I have broken away for ever from those things.”

“Yes, Mr. Mills talked to me about you. What a golden heart that is. His sympathies are infinite.”

I thought suddenly of Mills pronouncing on Mme. Blunt, whatever his text on me might have been: “She lives by her
wits.” Was she exercising her wits on me for some purpose of her own? And I observed coldly:

“I really know your son so very little.”

“Oh, voyons,” she protested. “I am aware that you are very much younger, but the similitudes of opinions, origins
and perhaps at bottom, faintly, of character, of chivalrous devotion — no, you must be able to understand him in a
measure. He is infinitely scrupulous and recklessly brave.”

I listened deferentially to the end yet with every nerve in my body tingling in hostile response to the Blunt
vibration, which seemed to have got into my very hair.

“I am convinced of it, Madame. I have even heard of your son’s bravery. It’s extremely natural in a man who, in his
own words, ‘lives by his sword.’”

She suddenly departed from her almost inhuman perfection, betrayed “nerves” like a common mortal, of course very
slightly, but in her it meant more than a blaze of fury from a vessel of inferior clay. Her admirable little foot,
marvellously shod in a black shoe, tapped the floor irritably. But even in that display there was something exquisitely
delicate. The very anger in her voice was silvery, as it were, and more like the petulance of a seventeen-year-old
beauty.

“What nonsense! A Blunt doesn’t hire himself.”

“Some princely families,” I said, “were founded by men who have done that very thing. The great Condottieri, you
know.”

It was in an almost tempestuous tone that she made me observe that we were not living in the fifteenth century. She
gave me also to understand with some spirit that there was no question here of founding a family. Her son was very far
from being the first of the name. His importance lay rather in being the last of a race which had totally perished, she
added in a completely drawing-room tone, “in our Civil War.”

She had mastered her irritation and through the glass side of the room sent a wistful smile to his address, but I
noticed the yet unextinguished anger in her eyes full of fire under her beautiful white eyebrows. For she was growing
old! Oh, yes, she was growing old, and secretly weary, and perhaps desperate.

Chapter 3

Without caring much about it I was conscious of sudden illumination. I said to myself confidently
that these two people had been quarrelling all the morning. I had discovered the secret of my invitation to that lunch.
They did not care to face the strain of some obstinate, inconclusive discussion for fear, maybe, of it ending in a
serious quarrel. And so they had agreed that I should be fetched downstairs to create a diversion. I cannot say I felt
annoyed. I didn’t care. My perspicacity did not please me either. I wished they had left me alone — but nothing
mattered. They must have been in their superiority accustomed to make use of people, without compunction. From
necessity, too. She especially. She lived by her wits. The silence had grown so marked that I had at last to raise my
eyes; and the first thing I observed was that Captain Blunt was no longer to be seen in the garden. Must have gone
indoors. Would rejoin us in a moment. Then I would leave mother and son to themselves.

The next thing I noticed was that a great mellowness had descended upon the mother of the last of his race. But
these terms, irritation, mellowness, appeared gross when applied to her. It is impossible to give an idea of the
refinement and subtlety of all her transformations. She smiled faintly at me.

“But all this is beside the point. The real point is that my son, like all fine natures, is a being of strange
contradictions which the trials of life have not yet reconciled in him. With me it is a little different. The trials
fell mainly to my share — and of course I have lived longer. And then men are much more complex than women, much more
difficult, too. And you, Monsieur George? Are you complex, with unexpected resistances and difficulties in your etre
intime — your inner self? I wonder now. . .”

The Blunt atmosphere seemed to vibrate all over my skin. I disregarded the symptom. “Madame,” I said, “I have never
tried to find out what sort of being I am.”

“Ah, that’s very wrong. We ought to reflect on what manner of beings we are. Of course we are all sinners. My John
is a sinner like the others,” she declared further, with a sort of proud tenderness as though our common lot must have
felt honoured and to a certain extent purified by this condescending recognition.

“You are too young perhaps as yet . . . But as to my John,” she broke off, leaning her elbow on the table
and supporting her head on her old, impeccably shaped, white fore-arm emerging from a lot of precious, still older,
lace trimming the short sleeve. “The trouble is that he suffers from a profound discord between the necessary reactions
to life and even the impulses of nature and the lofty idealism of his feelings; I may say, of his principles. I assure
you that he won’t even let his heart speak uncontradicted.”

I am sure I don’t know what particular devil looks after the associations of memory, and I can’t even imagine the
shock which it would have been for Mrs. Blunt to learn that the words issuing from her lips had awakened in me the
visual perception of a dark-skinned, hard-driven lady’s maid with tarnished eyes; even of the tireless Rose handing me
my hat while breathing out the enigmatic words: “Madame should listen to her heart.” A wave from the atmosphere of
another house rolled in, overwhelming and fiery, seductive and cruel, through the Blunt vibration, bursting through it
as through tissue paper and filling my heart with sweet murmurs and distracting images, till it seemed to break,
leaving an empty stillness in my breast.

After that for a long time I heard Mme. Blunt mere talking with extreme fluency and I even caught the individual
words, but I could not in the revulsion of my feelings get hold of the sense. She talked apparently of life in general,
of its difficulties, moral and physical, of its surprising turns, of its unexpected contacts, of the choice and rare
personalities that drift on it as if on the sea; of the distinction that letters and art gave to it, the nobility and
consolations there are in aesthetics, of the privileges they confer on individuals and (this was the first connected
statement I caught) that Mills agreed with her in the general point of view as to the inner worth of individualities
and in the particular instance of it on which she had opened to him her innermost heart. Mills had a universal mind.
His sympathy was universal, too. He had that large comprehension — oh, not cynical, not at all cynical, in fact rather
tender — which was found in its perfection only in some rare, very rare Englishmen. The dear creature was romantic,
too. Of course he was reserved in his speech but she understood Mills perfectly. Mills apparently liked me very
much.

It was time for me to say something. There was a challenge in the reposeful black eyes resting upon my face. I
murmured that I was very glad to hear it. She waited a little, then uttered meaningly, “Mr. Mills is a little bit
uneasy about you.”

“It’s very good of him,” I said. And indeed I thought that it was very good of him, though I did ask myself vaguely
in my dulled brain why he should be uneasy.

Somehow it didn’t occur to me to ask Mrs. Blunt. Whether she had expected me to do so or not I don’t know but after
a while she changed the pose she had kept so long and folded her wonderfully preserved white arms. She looked a perfect
picture in silver and grey, with touches of black here and there. Still I said nothing more in my dull misery. She
waited a little longer, then she woke me up with a crash. It was as if the house had fallen, and yet she had only asked
me:

“I believe you are received on very friendly terms by Madame de Lastaola on account of your common exertions for the
cause. Very good friends, are you not?”

“You mean Rita,” I said stupidly, but I felt stupid, like a man who wakes up only to be hit on the head.

“Oh, Rita,” she repeated with unexpected acidity, which somehow made me feel guilty of an incredible breach of good
manners. “H’m, Rita. . . . Oh, well, let it be Rita — for the present. Though why she should be deprived of
her name in conversation about her, really I don’t understand. Unless a very special intimacy. . .”

She was distinctly annoyed. I said sulkily, “It isn’t her name.”

“It is her choice, I understand, which seems almost a better title to recognition on the part of the world. It
didn’t strike you so before? Well, it seems to me that choice has got more right to be respected than heredity or law.
Moreover, Mme. de Lastaola,” she continued in an insinuating voice, “that most rare and fascinating young woman is, as
a friend like you cannot deny, outside legality altogether. Even in that she is an exceptional creature. For she is
exceptional — you agree?”

I had gone dumb, I could only stare at her.

“Oh, I see, you agree. No friend of hers could deny.”

“Madame,” I burst out, “I don’t know where a question of friendship comes in here with a person whom you yourself
call so exceptional. I really don’t know how she looks upon me. Our intercourse is of course very close and
confidential. Is that also talked about in Paris?”

“Not at all, not in the least,” said Mrs. Blunt, easy, equable, but with her calm, sparkling eyes holding me in
angry subjection. “Nothing of the sort is being talked about. The references to Mme. de Lastaola are in a very
different tone, I can assure you, thanks to her discretion in remaining here. And, I must say, thanks to the discreet
efforts of her friends. I am also a friend of Mme. de Lastaola, you must know. Oh, no, I have never spoken to her in my
life and have seen her only twice, I believe. I wrote to her though, that I admit. She or rather the image of her has
come into my life, into that part of it where art and letters reign undisputed like a sort of religion of beauty to
which I have been faithful through all the vicissitudes of my existence. Yes, I did write to her and I have been
preoccupied with her for a long time. It arose from a picture, from two pictures and also from a phrase pronounced by a
man, who in the science of life and in the perception of aesthetic truth had no equal in the world of culture. He said
that there was something in her of the women of all time. I suppose he meant the inheritance of all the gifts that make
up an irresistible fascination — a great personality. Such women are not born often. Most of them lack opportunities.
They never develop. They end obscurely. Here and there one survives to make her mark even in history. . . .
And even that is not a very enviable fate. They are at another pole from the so-called dangerous women who are merely
coquettes. A coquette has got to work for her success. The others have nothing to do but simply exist. You perceive the
view I take of the difference?”

I perceived the view. I said to myself that nothing in the world could be more aristocratic. This was the
slave-owning woman who had never worked, even if she had been reduced to live by her wits. She was a wonderful old
woman. She made me dumb. She held me fascinated by the well-bred attitude, something sublimely aloof in her air of
wisdom.

I just simply let myself go admiring her as though I had been a mere slave of aesthetics: the perfect grace, the
amazing poise of that venerable head, the assured as if royal — yes, royal even flow of the voice. . . . But
what was it she was talking about now? These were no longer considerations about fatal women. She was talking about her
son again. My interest turned into mere bitterness of contemptuous attention. For I couldn’t withhold it though I tried
to let the stuff go by. Educated in the most aristocratic college in Paris . . . at eighteen . . .
call of duty . . . with General Lee to the very last cruel minute . . . after that catastrophe end
of the world — return to France — to old friendships, infinite kindness — but a life hollow, without occupation
. . . Then 1870 — and chivalrous response to adopted country’s call and again emptiness, the chafing of a
proud spirit without aim and handicapped not exactly by poverty but by lack of fortune. And she, the mother, having to
look on at this wasting of a most accomplished man, of a most chivalrous nature that practically had no future before
it.

“You understand me well, Monsieur George. A nature like this! It is the most refined cruelty of fate to look at. I
don’t know whether I suffered more in times of war or in times of peace. You understand?”

I bowed my head in silence. What I couldn’t understand was why he delayed so long in joining us again. Unless he had
had enough of his mother? I thought without any great resentment that I was being victimized; but then it occurred to
me that the cause of his absence was quite simple. I was familiar enough with his habits by this time to know that he
often managed to snatch an hour’s sleep or so during the day. He had gone and thrown himself on his bed.

“I admire him exceedingly,” Mrs. Blunt was saying in a tone which was not at all maternal. “His distinction, his
fastidiousness, the earnest warmth of his heart. I know him well. I assure you that I would never have dared to
suggest,” she continued with an extraordinary haughtiness of attitude and tone that aroused my attention, “I would
never have dared to put before him my views of the extraordinary merits and the uncertain fate of the exquisite woman
of whom we speak, if I had not been certain that, partly by my fault, I admit, his attention has been attracted to her
and his — his — his heart engaged.”

It was as if some one had poured a bucket of cold water over my head. I woke up with a great shudder to the acute
perception of my own feelings and of that aristocrat’s incredible purpose. How it could have germinated, grown and
matured in that exclusive soil was inconceivable. She had been inciting her son all the time to undertake wonderful
salvage work by annexing the heiress of Henry Allegre — the woman and the fortune.

There must have been an amazed incredulity in my eyes, to which her own responded by an unflinching black brilliance
which suddenly seemed to develop a scorching quality even to the point of making me feel extremely thirsty all of a
sudden. For a time my tongue literally clove to the roof of my mouth. I don’t know whether it was an illusion but it
seemed to me that Mrs. Blunt had nodded at me twice as if to say: “You are right, that’s so.” I made an effort to speak
but it was very poor. If she did hear me it was because she must have been on the watch for the faintest sound.

“His heart engaged. Like two hundred others, or two thousand, all around,” I mumbled.

“Altogether different. And it’s no disparagement to a woman surely. Of course her great fortune protects her in a
certain measure.”

“Does it?” I faltered out and that time I really doubt whether she heard me. Her aspect in my eyes had changed. Her
purpose being disclosed, her well-bred ease appeared sinister, her aristocratic repose a treacherous device, her
venerable graciousness a mask of unbounded contempt for all human beings whatever. She was a terrible old woman with
those straight, white wolfish eye-brows. How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone ought to have been enough to give
her away. Yet they were as beautifully smooth as her voice when she admitted: “That protection naturally is only
partial. There is the danger of her own self, poor girl. She requires guidance.”

I marvelled at the villainy of my tone as I spoke, but it was only assumed.

“I don’t think she has done badly for herself, so far,” I forced myself to say. “I suppose you know that she began
life by herding the village goats.”

In the course of that phrase I noticed her wince just the least bit. Oh, yes, she winced; but at the end of it she
smiled easily.

“No, I didn’t know. So she told you her story! Oh, well, I suppose you are very good friends. A goatherd — really?
In the fairy tale I believe the girl that marries the prince is — what is it? — a gardeuse d’oies. And what a thing to
drag out against a woman. One might just as soon reproach any of them for coming unclothed into the world. They all do,
you know. And then they become — what you will discover when you have lived longer, Monsieur George — for the most part
futile creatures, without any sense of truth and beauty, drudges of all sorts, or else dolls to dress. In a word —
ordinary.”

The implication of scorn in her tranquil manner was immense. It seemed to condemn all those that were not born in
the Blunt connection. It was the perfect pride of Republican aristocracy, which has no gradations and knows no limit,
and, as if created by the grace of God, thinks it ennobles everything it touches: people, ideas, even passing
tastes!

“How many of them,” pursued Mrs. Blunt, “have had the good fortune, the leisure to develop their intelligence and
their beauty in aesthetic conditions as this charming woman had? Not one in a million. Perhaps not one in an age.”

“The heiress of Henry Allegre,” I murmured.

“Precisely. But John wouldn’t be marrying the heiress of Henry Allegre.”

It was the first time that the frank word, the clear idea, came into the conversation and it made me feel ill with a
sort of enraged faintness.

“No,” I said. “It would be Mme. de Lastaola then.”

“Mme. la Comtesse de Lastaola as soon as she likes after the success of this war.”

“And you believe in its success?”

“Do you?”

“Not for a moment,” I declared, and was surprised to see her look pleased.

She was an aristocrat to the tips of her fingers; she really didn’t care for anybody. She had passed through the
Empire, she had lived through a siege, had rubbed shoulders with the Commune, had seen everything, no doubt, of what
men are capable in the pursuit of their desires or in the extremity of their distress, for love, for money, and even
for honour; and in her precarious connection with the very highest spheres she had kept her own honourability unscathed
while she had lost all her prejudices. She was above all that. Perhaps “the world” was the only thing that could have
the slightest checking influence; but when I ventured to say something about the view it might take of such an alliance
she looked at me for a moment with visible surprise.

“My dear Monsieur George, I have lived in the great world all my life. It’s the best that there is, but that’s only
because there is nothing merely decent anywhere. It will accept anything, forgive anything, forget anything in a few
days. And after all who will he be marrying? A charming, clever, rich and altogether uncommon woman. What did the world
hear of her? Nothing. The little it saw of her was in the Bois for a few hours every year, riding by the side of a man
of unique distinction and of exclusive tastes, devoted to the cult of aesthetic impressions; a man of whom, as far as
aspect, manner, and behaviour goes, she might have been the daughter. I have seen her myself. I went on purpose. I was
immensely struck. I was even moved. Yes. She might have been — except for that something radiant in her that marked her
apart from all the other daughters of men. The few remarkable personalities that count in society and who were admitted
into Henry Allegre’s Pavilion treated her with punctilious reserve. I know that, I have made enquiries. I know she sat
there amongst them like a marvellous child, and for the rest what can they say about her? That when abandoned to
herself by the death of Allegre she has made a mistake? I think that any woman ought to be allowed one mistake in her
life. The worst they can say of her is that she discovered it, that she had sent away a man in love directly she found
out that his love was not worth having; that she had told him to go and look for his crown, and that, after dismissing
him she had remained generously faithful to his cause, in her person and fortune. And this, you will allow, is rather
uncommon upon the whole.”

“You make her out very magnificent,” I murmured, looking down upon the floor.

“Isn’t she?” exclaimed the aristocratic Mrs. Blunt, with an almost youthful ingenuousness, and in those black eyes
which looked at me so calmly there was a flash of the Southern beauty, still naive and romantic, as if altogether
untouched by experience. “I don’t think there is a single grain of vulgarity in all her enchanting person. Neither is
there in my son. I suppose you won’t deny that he is uncommon.” She paused.

“Absolutely,” I said in a perfectly conventional tone, I was now on my mettle that she should not discover what
there was humanly common in my nature. She took my answer at her own valuation and was satisfied.

“They can’t fail to understand each other on the very highest level of idealistic perceptions. Can you imagine my
John thrown away on some enamoured white goose out of a stuffy old salon? Why, she couldn’t even begin to understand
what he feels or what he needs.”

“Yes,” I said impenetrably, “he is not easy to understand.”

“I have reason to think,” she said with a suppressed smile, “that he has a certain power over women. Of course I
don’t know anything about his intimate life but a whisper or two have reached me, like that, floating in the air, and I
could hardly suppose that he would find an exceptional resistance in that quarter of all others. But I should like to
know the exact degree.”

I disregarded an annoying tendency to feel dizzy that came over me and was very careful in managing my voice.

“May I ask, Madame, why you are telling me all this?”

“For two reasons,” she condescended graciously. “First of all because Mr. Mills told me that you were much more
mature than one would expect. In fact you look much younger than I was prepared for.”

“Madame,” I interrupted her, “I may have a certain capacity for action and for responsibility, but as to the regions
into which this very unexpected conversation has taken me I am a great novice. They are outside my interest. I have had
no experience.”

“Don’t make yourself out so hopeless,” she said in a spoilt-beauty tone. “You have your intuitions. At any rate you
have a pair of eyes. You are everlastingly over there, so I understand. Surely you have seen how far they are. . .”

I interrupted again and this time bitterly, but always in a tone of polite enquiry:

“You think her facile, Madame?”

She looked offended. “I think her most fastidious. It is my son who is in question here.”

And I understood then that she looked on her son as irresistible. For my part I was just beginning to think that it
would be impossible for me to wait for his return. I figured him to myself lying dressed on his bed sleeping like a
stone. But there was no denying that the mother was holding me with an awful, tortured interest. Twice Therese had
opened the door, had put her small head in and drawn it back like a tortoise. But for some time I had lost the sense of
us two being quite alone in the studio. I had perceived the familiar dummy in its corner but it lay now on the floor as
if Therese had knocked it down angrily with a broom for a heathen idol. It lay there prostrate, handless, without its
head, pathetic, like the mangled victim of a crime.

“John is fastidious, too,” began Mrs. Blunt again. “Of course you wouldn’t suppose anything vulgar in his
resistances to a very real sentiment. One has got to understand his psychology. He can’t leave himself in peace. He is
exquisitely absurd.”

I recognized the phrase. Mother and son talked of each other in identical terms. But perhaps “exquisitely absurd”
was the Blunt family saying? There are such sayings in families and generally there is some truth in them. Perhaps this
old woman was simply absurd. She continued:

“We had a most painful discussion all this morning. He is angry with me for suggesting the very thing his whole
being desires. I don’t feel guilty. It’s he who is tormenting himself with his infinite scrupulosity.”

“Ah,” I said, looking at the mangled dummy like the model of some atrocious murder. “Ah, the fortune. But that can
be left alone.”

“What nonsense! How is it possible? It isn’t contained in a bag, you can’t throw it into the sea. And moreover, it
isn’t her fault. I am astonished that you should have thought of that vulgar hypocrisy. No, it isn’t her fortune that
cheeks my son; it’s something much more subtle. Not so much her history as her position. He is absurd. It isn’t what
has happened in her life. It’s her very freedom that makes him torment himself and her, too — as far as I can
understand.”

I suppressed a groan and said to myself that I must really get away from there.

Mrs. Blunt was fairly launched now.

“For all his superiority he is a man of the world and shares to a certain extent its current opinions. He has no
power over her. She intimidates him. He wishes he had never set eyes on her. Once or twice this morning he looked at me
as if he could find it in his heart to hate his old mother. There is no doubt about it — he loves her, Monsieur George.
He loves her, this poor, luckless, perfect homme du monde.”

The silence lasted for some time and then I heard a murmur: “It’s a matter of the utmost delicacy between two beings
so sensitive, so proud. It has to be managed.”

I found myself suddenly on my feet and saying with the utmost politeness that I had to beg her permission to leave
her alone as I had an engagement; but she motioned me simply to sit down — and I sat down again.

“I told you I had a request to make,” she said. “I have understood from Mr. Mills that you have been to the West
Indies, that you have some interests there.”

I was astounded. “Interests! I certainly have been there,” I said, “but. . .”

She caught me up. “Then why not go there again? I am speaking to you frankly because. . .”

“But, Madame, I am engaged in this affair with Dona Rita, even if I had any interests elsewhere. I won’t tell you
about the importance of my work. I didn’t suspect it but you brought the news of it to me, and so I needn’t point it
out to you.”

And now we were frankly arguing with each other.

“But where will it lead you in the end? You have all your life before you, all your plans, prospects, perhaps
dreams, at any rate your own tastes and all your life-time before you. And would you sacrifice all this to — the
Pretender? A mere figure for the front page of illustrated papers.”’

“I never think of him,” I said curtly, “but I suppose Dona Rita’s feelings, instincts, call it what you like — or
only her chivalrous fidelity to her mistakes — ”

“Dona Rita’s presence here in this town, her withdrawal from the possible complications of her life in Paris has
produced an excellent effect on my son. It simplifies infinite difficulties, I mean moral as well as material. It’s
extremely to the advantage of her dignity, of her future, and of her peace of mind. But I am thinking, of course,
mainly of my son. He is most exacting.”

I felt extremely sick at heart. “And so I am to drop everything and vanish,” I said, rising from my chair again. And
this time Mrs. Blunt got up, too, with a lofty and inflexible manner but she didn’t dismiss me yet.

“Yes,” she said distinctly. “All this, my dear Monsieur George, is such an accident. What have you got to do here?
You look to me like somebody who would find adventures wherever he went as interesting and perhaps less dangerous than
this one.”

She slurred over the word dangerous but I picked it up.

“What do you know of its dangers, Madame, may I ask?” But she did not condescend to hear.

“And then you, too, have your chivalrous feelings,” she went on, unswerving, distinct, and tranquil. “You are not
absurd. But my son is. He would shut her up in a convent for a time if he could.”

“He isn’t the only one,” I muttered.

“Indeed!” she was startled, then lower, “Yes. That woman must be the centre of all sorts of passions,” she mused
audibly. “But what have you got to do with all this? It’s nothing to you.”

She waited for me to speak.

“Exactly, Madame,” I said, “and therefore I don’t see why I should concern myself in all this one way or
another.”

“No,” she assented with a weary air, “except that you might ask yourself what is the good of tormenting a man of
noble feelings, however absurd. His Southern blood makes him very violent sometimes. I fear — “ And then for the first
time during this conversation, for the first time since I left Dona Rita the day before, for the first time I
laughed.

“Do you mean to hint, Madame, that Southern gentlemen are dead shots? I am aware of that — from novels.”

I spoke looking her straight in the face and I made that exquisite, aristocratic old woman positively blink by my
directness. There was a faint flush on her delicate old cheeks but she didn’t move a muscle of her face. I made her a
most respectful bow and went out of the studio.

Chapter 4

Through the great arched window of the hall I saw the hotel brougham waiting at the door. On passing
the door of the front room (it was originally meant for a drawing-room but a bed for Blunt was put in there) I banged
with my fist on the panel and shouted: “I am obliged to go out. Your mother’s carriage is at the door.” I didn’t think
he was asleep. My view now was that he was aware beforehand of the subject of the conversation, and if so I did not
wish to appear as if I had slunk away from him after the interview. But I didn’t stop — I didn’t want to see him — and
before he could answer I was already half way up the stairs running noiselessly up the thick carpet which also covered
the floor of the landing. Therefore opening the door of my sitting-room quickly I caught by surprise the person who was
in there watching the street half concealed by the window curtain. It was a woman. A totally unexpected woman. A
perfect stranger. She came away quickly to meet me. Her face was veiled and she was dressed in a dark walking costume
and a very simple form of hat. She murmured: “I had an idea that Monsieur was in the house,” raising a gloved hand to
lift her veil. It was Rose and she gave me a shock. I had never seen her before but with her little black silk apron
and a white cap with ribbons on her head. This outdoor dress was like a disguise. I asked anxiously:

“What has happened to Madame?”

“Nothing. I have a letter,” she murmured, and I saw it appear between the fingers of her extended hand, in a very
white envelope which I tore open impatiently. It consisted of a few lines only. It began abruptly:

“If you are gone to sea then I can’t forgive you for not sending the usual word at the last moment. If you are not
gone why don’t you come? Why did you leave me yesterday? You leave me crying — I who haven’t cried for years and years,
and you haven’t the sense to come back within the hour, within twenty hours! This conduct is idiotic” — and a sprawling
signature of the four magic letters at the bottom.

While I was putting the letter in my pocket the girl said in an earnest undertone: “I don’t like to leave Madame by
herself for any length of time.”

“How long have you been in my room?” I asked.

“The time seemed long. I hope Monsieur won’t mind the liberty. I sat for a little in the hall but then it struck me
I might be seen. In fact, Madame told me not to be seen if I could help it.”

“Why did she tell you that?”

“I permitted myself to suggest that to Madame. It might have given a false impression. Madame is frank and open like
the day but it won’t do with everybody. There are people who would put a wrong construction on anything. Madame’s
sister told me Monsieur was out.”

“And you didn’t believe her?”

“Non, Monsieur. I have lived with Madame’s sister for nearly a week when she first came into this house. She wanted
me to leave the message, but I said I would wait a little. Then I sat down in the big porter’s chair in the hall and
after a while, everything being very quiet, I stole up here. I know the disposition of the apartments. I reckoned
Madame’s sister would think that I got tired of waiting and let myself out.”

“And you have been amusing yourself watching the street ever since?”

“The time seemed long,” she answered evasively. “An empty coupe came to the door about an hour ago and it’s still
waiting,” she added, looking at me inquisitively.

“It seems strange.”

“There are some dancing girls staying in the house,” I said negligently. “Did you leave Madame alone?”

“There’s the gardener and his wife in the house.”

“Those people keep at the back. Is Madame alone? That’s what I want to know.”

“Monsieur forgets that I have been three hours away; but I assure Monsieur that here in this town it’s perfectly
safe for Madame to be alone.”

“And wouldn’t it be anywhere else? It’s the first I hear of it.”

“In Paris, in our apartments in the hotel, it’s all right, too; but in the Pavilion, for instance, I wouldn’t leave
Madame by herself, not for half an hour.”

She made a movement towards the window but checked herself. I hadn’t moved. The rattle of wheels on the
cobble-stones died out almost at once.

“Will Monsieur write an answer?” Rose suggested after a short silence.

“Hardly worth while,” I said. “I will be there very soon after you. Meantime, please tell Madame from me that I am
not anxious to see any more tears. Tell her this just like that, you understand. I will take the risk of not being
received.”

She dropped her eyes, said: “Oui, Monsieur,” and at my suggestion waited, holding the door of the room half open,
till I went downstairs to see the road clear.

It was a kind of deaf-and-dumb house. The black-and-white hall was empty and everything was perfectly still. Blunt
himself had no doubt gone away with his mother in the brougham, but as to the others, the dancing girls, Therese, or
anybody else that its walls may have contained, they might have been all murdering each other in perfect assurance that
the house would not betray them by indulging in any unseemly murmurs. I emitted a low whistle which didn’t seem to
travel in that peculiar atmosphere more than two feet away from my lips, but all the same Rose came tripping down the
stairs at once. With just a nod to my whisper: “Take a fiacre,” she glided out and I shut the door noiselessly behind
her.

The next time I saw her she was opening the door of the house on the Prado to me, with her cap and the little black
silk apron on, and with that marked personality of her own, which had been concealed so perfectly in the dowdy walking
dress, very much to the fore.

“I have given Madame the message,” she said in her contained voice, swinging the door wide open. Then after
relieving me of my hat and coat she announced me with the simple words: “Voile Monsieur,” and hurried away. Directly I
appeared Dona Rita, away there on the couch, passed the tips of her fingers over her eyes and holding her hands up
palms outwards on each side of her head, shouted to me down the whole length of the room: “The dry season has set in.”
I glanced at the pink tips of her fingers perfunctorily and then drew back. She let her hands fall negligently as if
she had no use for them any more and put on a serious expression.

“So it seems,” I said, sitting down opposite her. “For how long, I wonder.”

“For years and years. One gets so little encouragement. First you bolt away from my tears, then you send an
impertinent message, and then when you come at last you pretend to behave respectfully, though you don’t know how to do
it. You should sit much nearer the edge of the chair and hold yourself very stiff, and make it quite clear that you
don’t know what to do with your hands.”

All this in a fascinating voice with a ripple of badinage that seemed to play upon the sober surface of her
thoughts. Then seeing that I did not answer she altered the note a bit.

“Amigo George,” she said, “I take the trouble to send for you and here I am before you, talking to you and you say
nothing.”

“What am I to say?”

“How can I tell? You might say a thousand things. You might, for instance, tell me that you were sorry for my
tears.”

“I might also tell you a thousand lies. What do I know about your tears? I am not a susceptible idiot. It all
depends upon the cause. There are tears of quiet happiness. Peeling onions also will bring tears.”

“Oh, you are not susceptible,” she flew out at me. “But you are an idiot all the same.”

“Is it to tell me this that you have written to me to come?” I asked with a certain animation.

“Yes. And if you had as much sense as the talking parrot I owned once you would have read between the lines that all
I wanted you here for was to tell you what I think of you.”

“Well, tell me what you think of me.”

“I would in a moment if I could be half as impertinent as you are.”

“What unexpected modesty,” I said.

“These, I suppose, are your sea manners.”

“I wouldn’t put up with half that nonsense from anybody at sea. Don’t you remember you told me yourself to go away?
What was I to do?”

“How stupid you are. I don’t mean that you pretend. You really are. Do you understand what I say? I will spell it
for you. S-t-u-p-i-d. Ah, now I feel better. Oh, amigo George, my dear fellow-conspirator for the king — the king. Such
a king! Vive le Roi! Come, why don’t you shout Vive le Roi, too?”

“I am not your parrot,” I said.

“No, he never sulked. He was a charming, good-mannered bird, accustomed to the best society, whereas you, I suppose,
are nothing but a heartless vagabond like myself.”

“I daresay you are, but I suppose nobody had the insolence to tell you that to your face.”

“Well, very nearly. It was what it amounted to. I am not stupid. There is no need to spell out simple words for me.
It just came out. Don Juan struggled desperately to keep the truth in. It was most pathetic. And yet he couldn’t help
himself. He talked very much like a parrot.”

“Of the best society,” I suggested.

“Yes, the most honourable of parrots. I don’t like parrot-talk. It sounds so uncanny. Had I lived in the Middle Ages
I am certain I would have believed that a talking bird must be possessed by the devil. I am sure Therese would believe
that now. My own sister! She would cross herself many times and simply quake with terror.”

“But you were not terrified,” I said. “May I ask when that interesting communication took place?”

“Yesterday, just before you blundered in here of all days in the year. I was sorry for him.”

“Those unforgiven tears! Oh, you simple soul! Don’t you know that people never cry for anybody but themselves?
. . . Amigo George, tell me — what are we doing in this world?”

“Do you mean all the people, everybody?”

“No, only people like you and me. Simple people, in this world which is eaten up with charlatanism of all sorts so
that even we, the simple, don’t know any longer how to trust each other.”

“Don’t we? Then why don’t you trust him? You are dying to do so, don’t you know?”

She dropped her chin on her breast and from under her straight eyebrows the deep blue eyes remained fixed on me,
impersonally, as if without thought.

“What have you been doing since you left me yesterday?” she asked.

“The first thing I remember I abused your sister horribly this morning.”

“And how did she take it?”

“Like a warm shower in spring. She drank it all in and unfolded her petals.”

“What poetical expressions he uses! That girl is more perverted than one would think possible, considering what she
is and whence she came. It’s true that I, too, come from the same spot.”

“She is slightly crazy. I am a great favourite with her. I don’t say this to boast.”

“It must be very comforting.”

“Yes, it has cheered me immensely. Then after a morning of delightful musings on one thing and another I went to
lunch with a charming lady and spent most of the afternoon talking with her.”

Dona Rita raised her head.

“A lady! Women seem such mysterious creatures to me. I don’t know them. Did you abuse her? Did she — how did you say
that? — unfold her petals, too? Was she really and truly. . .?”

“She is simply perfection in her way and the conversation was by no means banal. I fancy that if your late parrot
had heard it, he would have fallen off his perch. For after all, in that Allegre Pavilion, my dear Rita, you were but a
crowd of glorified bourgeois.”

She was beautifully animated now. In her motionless blue eyes like melted sapphires, around those red lips that
almost without moving could breathe enchanting sounds into the world, there was a play of light, that mysterious ripple
of gaiety that seemed always to run and faintly quiver under her skin even in her gravest moods; just as in her rare
moments of gaiety its warmth and radiance seemed to come to one through infinite sadness, like the sunlight of our life
hiding the invincible darkness in which the universe must work out its impenetrable destiny.

“Now I think of it! . . . Perhaps that’s the reason I never could feel perfectly serious while they were
demolishing the world about my ears. I fancy now that I could tell beforehand what each of them was going to say. They
were repeating the same words over and over again, those great clever men, very much like parrots who also seem to know
what they say. That doesn’t apply to the master of the house, who never talked much. He sat there mostly silent and
looming up three sizes bigger than any of them.”

“The ruler of the aviary,” I muttered viciously.

“It annoys you that I should talk of that time?” she asked in a tender voice. “Well, I won’t, except for once to say
that you must not make a mistake: in that aviary he was the man. I know because he used to talk to me afterwards
sometimes. Strange! For six years he seemed to carry all the world and me with it in his hand. . . . ”

“He dominates you yet,” I shouted.

She shook her head innocently as a child would do.

“No, no. You brought him into the conversation yourself. You think of him much more than I do.” Her voice drooped
sadly to a hopeless note. “I hardly ever do. He is not the sort of person to merely flit through one’s mind and so I
have no time. Look. I had eleven letters this morning and there were also five telegrams before midday, which have
tangled up everything. I am quite frightened.”

And she explained to me that one of them — the long one on the top of the pile, on the table over there — seemed to
contain ugly inferences directed at herself in a menacing way. She begged me to read it and see what I could make of
it.

I knew enough of the general situation to see at a glance that she had misunderstood it thoroughly and even
amazingly. I proved it to her very quickly. But her mistake was so ingenious in its wrongheadedness and arose so
obviously from the distraction of an acute mind, that I couldn’t help looking at her admiringly.

“Rita,” I said, “you are a marvellous idiot.”

“Am I? Imbecile,” she retorted with an enchanting smile of relief. “But perhaps it only seems so to you in contrast
with the lady so perfect in her way. What is her way?”

“Her way, I should say, lies somewhere between her sixtieth and seventieth year, and I have walked tete-e-tete with
her for some little distance this afternoon.”

“Heavens,” she whispered, thunderstruck. “And meantime I had the son here. He arrived about five minutes after Rose
left with that note for you,” she went on in a tone of awe. “As a matter of fact, Rose saw him across the street but
she thought she had better go on to you.”

“I am furious with myself for not having guessed that much,” I said bitterly. “I suppose you got him out of the
house about five minutes after you heard I was coming here. Rose ought to have turned back when she saw him on his way
to cheer your solitude. That girl is stupid after all, though she has got a certain amount of low cunning which no
doubt is very useful at times.”

“I forbid you to talk like this about Rose. I won’t have it. Rose is not to be abused before me.”

“I only mean to say that she failed in this instance to read your mind, that’s all.”

“This is, without exception, the most unintelligent thing you have said ever since I have known you. You may
understand a lot about running contraband and about the minds of a certain class of people, but as to Rose’s mind let
me tell you that in comparison with hers yours is absolutely infantile, my adventurous friend. It would be contemptible
if it weren’t so — what shall I call it? — babyish. You ought to be slapped and put to bed.” There was an extraordinary
earnestness in her tone and when she ceased I listened yet to the seductive inflexions of her voice, that no matter in
what mood she spoke seemed only fit for tenderness and love. And I thought suddenly of Azzolati being ordered to take
himself off from her presence for ever, in that voice the very anger of which seemed to twine itself gently round one’s
heart. No wonder the poor wretch could not forget the scene and couldn’t restrain his tears on the plain of
Rambouillet. My moods of resentment against Rita, hot as they were, had no more duration than a blaze of straw. So I
only said:

“Much YOU know about the management of children.” The corners of her lips stirred quaintly; her animosity,
especially when provoked by a personal attack upon herself, was always tinged by a sort of wistful humour of the most
disarming kind.

“Come, amigo George, let us leave poor Rose alone. You had better tell me what you heard from the lips of the
charming old lady. Perfection, isn’t she? I have never seen her in my life, though she says she has seen me several
times. But she has written to me on three separate occasions and every time I answered her as if I were writing to a
queen. Amigo George, how does one write to a queen? How should a goatherd that could have been mistress of a king, how
should she write to an old queen from very far away; from over the sea?”

“I will ask you as I have asked the old queen: why do you tell me all this, Dona Rita?”

“To discover what’s in your mind,” she said, a little impatiently.

“If you don’t know that yet!” I exclaimed under my breath.

“No, not in your mind. Can any one ever tell what is in a man’s mind? But I see you won’t tell.”

“What’s the good? You have written to her before, I understand. Do you think of continuing the correspondence?”

“Who knows?” she said in a profound tone. “She is the only woman that ever wrote to me. I returned her three letters
to her with my last answer, explaining humbly that I preferred her to burn them herself. And I thought that would be
the end of it. But an occasion may still arise.”

“Oh, if an occasion arises,” I said, trying to control my rage, “you may be able to begin your letter by the words
‘Chere Maman.’”

The cigarette box, which she had taken up without removing her eyes from me, flew out of her hand and opening in
mid-air scattered cigarettes for quite a surprising distance all over the room. I got up at once and wandered off
picking them up industriously. Dona Rita’s voice behind me said indifferently:

I returned with the box and placed it on the divan near her. She sat cross-legged, leaning back on her arms, in the
blue shimmer of her embroidered robe and with the tawny halo of her unruly hair about her face which she raised to mine
with an air of resignation.

“George, my friend,” she said, “we have no manners.”

“You would never have made a career at court, Dona Rita,” I observed. “You are too impulsive.”

“This is not bad manners, that’s sheer insolence. This has happened to you before. If it happens again, as I can’t
be expected to wrestle with a savage and desperate smuggler single-handed, I will go upstairs and lock myself in my
room till you leave the house. Why did you say this to me?”

“Oh, just for nothing, out of a full heart.”

“If your heart is full of things like that, then my dear friend, you had better take it out and give it to the
crows. No! you said that for the pleasure of appearing terrible. And you see you are not terrible at all, you are
rather amusing. Go on, continue to be amusing. Tell me something of what you heard from the lips of that aristocratic
old lady who thinks that all men are equal and entitled to the pursuit of happiness.”

“I hardly remember now. I heard something about the unworthiness of certain white geese out of stuffy drawing-rooms.
It sounds mad, but the lady knows exactly what she wants. I also heard your praises sung. I sat there like a fool not
knowing what to say.”

“Why? You might have joined in the singing.”

“I didn’t feel in the humour, because, don’t you see, I had been incidentally given to understand that I was an
insignificant and superfluous person who had better get out of the way of serious people.”

“Ah, par example!”

“In a sense, you know, it was flattering; but for the moment it made me feel as if I had been offered a pot of
mustard to sniff.”

She nodded with an amused air of understanding and I could see that she was interested. “Anything more?” she asked,
with a flash of radiant eagerness in all her person and bending slightly forward towards me.

“Oh, it’s hardly worth mentioning. It was a sort of threat wrapped up, I believe, in genuine anxiety as to what
might happen to my youthful insignificance. If I hadn’t been rather on the alert just then I wouldn’t even have
perceived the meaning. But really an allusion to ‘hot Southern blood’ I could have only one meaning. Of course I
laughed at it, but only ‘pour l’honneur’ and to show I understood perfectly. In reality it left me completely
indifferent.”

Dona Rita looked very serious for a minute.

“Indifferent to the whole conversation?”

I looked at her angrily.

“To the whole . . . You see I got up rather out of sorts this morning. Unrefreshed, you know. As if tired
of life.”

The liquid blue in her eyes remained directed at me without any expression except that of its usual mysterious
immobility, but all her face took on a sad and thoughtful cast. Then as if she had made up her mind under the pressure
of necessity:

“Listen, amigo,” she said, “I have suffered domination and it didn’t crush me because I have been strong enough to
live with it; I have known caprice, you may call it folly if you like, and it left me unharmed because I was great
enough not to be captured by anything that wasn’t really worthy of me. My dear, it went down like a house of cards
before my breath. There is something in me that will not be dazzled by any sort of prestige in this world, worthy or
unworthy. I am telling you this because you are younger than myself.”

“If you want me to say that there is nothing petty or mean about you, Dona Rita, then I do say it.”

She nodded at me with an air of accepting the rendered justice and went on with the utmost simplicity.

“And what is it that is coming to me now with all the airs of virtue? All the lawful conventions are coming to me,
all the glamours of respectability! And nobody can say that I have made as much as the slightest little sign to them.
Not so much as lifting my little finger. I suppose you know that?”

“I don’t know. I do not doubt your sincerity in anything you say. I am ready to believe. You are not one of those
who have to work.”

“Have to work — what do you mean?”

“It’s a phrase I have heard. What I meant was that it isn’t necessary for you to make any signs.”

She seemed to meditate over this for a while.

“Don’t be so sure of that,” she said, with a flash of mischief, which made her voice sound more melancholy than
before. “I am not so sure myself,” she continued with a curious, vanishing, intonation of despair. “I don’t know the
truth about myself because I never had an opportunity to compare myself to anything in the world. I have been offered
mock adulation, treated with mock reserve or with mock devotion, I have been fawned upon with an appalling earnestness
of purpose, I can tell you; but these later honours, my dear, came to me in the shape of a very loyal and very
scrupulous gentleman. For he is all that. And as a matter of fact I was touched.”

“I know. Even to tears,” I said provokingly. But she wasn’t provoked, she only shook her head in negation (which was
absurd) and pursued the trend of her spoken thoughts.

“That was yesterday,” she said. “And yesterday he was extremely correct and very full of extreme self-esteem which
expressed itself in the exaggerated delicacy with which he talked. But I know him in all his moods. I have known him
even playful. I didn’t listen to him. I was thinking of something else. Of things that were neither correct nor playful
and that had to be looked at steadily with all the best that was in me. And that was why, in the end — I cried —
yesterday.”

“I saw it yesterday and I had the weakness of being moved by those tears for a time.”

“If you want to make me cry again I warn you you won’t succeed.”

“No, I know. He has been here to-day and the dry season has set in.”

“Yes, he has been here. I assure you it was perfectly unexpected. Yesterday he was railing at the world at large, at
me who certainly have not made it, at himself and even at his mother. All this rather in parrot language, in the words
of tradition and morality as understood by the members of that exclusive club to which he belongs. And yet when I
thought that all this, those poor hackneyed words, expressed a sincere passion I could have found in my heart to be
sorry for him. But he ended by telling me that one couldn’t believe a single word I said, or something like that. You
were here then, you heard it yourself.”

“And it cut you to the quick,” I said. “It made you depart from your dignity to the point of weeping on any shoulder
that happened to be there. And considering that it was some more parrot talk after all (men have been saying that sort
of thing to women from the beginning of the world) this sensibility seems to me childish.”

“What perspicacity,” she observed, with an indulgent, mocking smile, then changed her tone. “Therefore he wasn’t
expected to-day when he turned up, whereas you, who were expected, remained subject to the charms of conversation in
that studio. It never occurred to you . . . did it? No! What had become of your perspicacity?”

“I tell you I was weary of life,” I said in a passion.

She had another faint smile of a fugitive and unrelated kind as if she had been thinking of far-off things, then
roused herself to grave animation.

“He came in full of smiling playfulness. How well I know that mood! Such self-command has its beauty; but it’s no
great help for a man with such fateful eyes. I could see he was moved in his correct, restrained way, and in his own
way, too, he tried to move me with something that would be very simple. He told me that ever since we became friends,
we two, he had not an hour of continuous sleep, unless perhaps when coming back dead-tired from outpost duty, and that
he longed to get back to it and yet hadn’t the courage to tear himself away from here. He was as simple as that. He’s a
tres galant homme of absolute probity, even with himself. I said to him: The trouble is, Don Juan, that it isn’t love
but mistrust that keeps you in torment. I might have said jealousy, but I didn’t like to use that word. A parrot would
have added that I had given him no right to be jealous. But I am no parrot. I recognized the rights of his passion
which I could very well see. He is jealous. He is not jealous of my past or of the future; but he is jealously
mistrustful of me, of what I am, of my very soul. He believes in a soul in the same way Therese does, as something that
can be touched with grace or go to perdition; and he doesn’t want to be damned with me before his own judgment seat. He
is a most noble and loyal gentleman, but I have my own Basque peasant soul and don’t want to think that every time he
goes away from my feet — yes, mon cher, on this carpet, look for the marks of scorching — that he goes away feeling
tempted to brush the dust off his moral sleeve. That! Never!”

With brusque movements she took a cigarette out of the box, held it in her fingers for a moment, then dropped it
unconsciously.

“And then, I don’t love him,” she uttered slowly as if speaking to herself and at the same time watching the very
quality of that thought. “I never did. At first he fascinated me with his fatal aspect and his cold society smiles. But
I have looked into those eyes too often. There are too many disdains in this aristocratic republican without a home.
His fate may be cruel, but it will always be commonplace. While he sat there trying in a worldly tone to explain to me
the problems, the scruples, of his suffering honour, I could see right into his heart and I was sorry for him. I was
sorry enough for him to feel that if he had suddenly taken me by the throat and strangled me slowly, avec delices, I
could forgive him while I choked. How correct he was! But bitterness against me peeped out of every second phrase. At
last I raised my hand and said to him, ‘Enough.’ I believe he was shocked by my plebeian abruptness but he was too
polite to show it. His conventions will always stand in the way of his nature. I told him that everything that had been
said and done during the last seven or eight months was inexplicable unless on the assumption that he was in love with
me, — and yet in everything there was an implication that he couldn’t forgive me my very existence. I did ask him
whether he didn’t think that it was absurd on his part . . . ”

“It would have reconciled him to your abruptness. It’s their family expression. It would have come with a familiar
sound and would have been less offensive.”

“Offensive,” Dona Rita repeated earnestly. “I don’t think he was offended; he suffered in another way, but I didn’t
care for that. It was I that had become offended in the end, without spite, you understand, but past bearing. I didn’t
spare him. I told him plainly that to want a woman formed in mind and body, mistress of herself, free in her choice,
independent in her thoughts; to love her apparently for what she is and at the same time to demand from her the candour
and the innocence that could be only a shocking pretence; to know her such as life had made her and at the same time to
despise her secretly for every touch with which her life had fashioned her — that was neither generous nor high minded;
it was positively frantic. He got up and went away to lean against the mantelpiece, there, on his elbow and with his
head in his hand. You have no idea of the charm and the distinction of his pose. I couldn’t help admiring him: the
expression, the grace, the fatal suggestion of his immobility. Oh, yes, I am sensible to aesthetic impressions, I have
been educated to believe that there is a soul in them.”

With that enigmatic, under the eyebrows glance fixed on me she laughed her deep contralto laugh without mirth but
also without irony, and profoundly moving by the mere purity of the sound.

“I suspect he was never so disgusted and appalled in his life. His self-command is the most admirable worldly thing
I have ever seen. What made it beautiful was that one could feel in it a tragic suggestion as in a great work of
art.”

She paused with an inscrutable smile that a great painter might have put on the face of some symbolic figure for the
speculation and wonder of many generations. I said:

“I always thought that love for you could work great wonders. And now I am certain.”

“Are you trying to be ironic?” she said sadly and very much as a child might have spoken.

“I don’t know,” I answered in a tone of the same simplicity. “I find it very difficult to be generous.”

“I, too,” she said with a sort of funny eagerness. “I didn’t treat him very generously. Only I didn’t say much more.
I found I didn’t care what I said — and it would have been like throwing insults at a beautiful composition. He was
well inspired not to move. It has spared him some disagreeable truths and perhaps I would even have said more than the
truth. I am not fair. I am no more fair than other people. I would have been harsh. My very admiration was making me
more angry. It’s ridiculous to say of a man got up in correct tailor clothes, but there was a funereal grace in his
attitude so that he might have been reproduced in marble on a monument to some woman in one of those atrocious Campo
Santos: the bourgeois conception of an aristocratic mourning lover. When I came to that conclusion I became glad that I
was angry or else I would have laughed right out before him.”

“I have heard a woman say once, a woman of the people — do you hear me, Dona Rita? — therefore deserving your
attention, that one should never laugh at love.”

“My dear,” she said gently, “I have been taught to laugh at most things by a man who never laughed himself; but it’s
true that he never spoke of love to me, love as a subject that is. So perhaps . . . But why?”

“Because (but maybe that old woman was crazy), because, she said, there was death in the mockery of love.”

Dona Rita moved slightly her beautiful shoulders and went on:

“I am glad, then, I didn’t laugh. And I am also glad I said nothing more. I was feeling so little generous that if I
had known something then of his mother’s allusion to ‘white geese’ I would have advised him to get one of them and lead
it away on a beautiful blue ribbon. Mrs. Blunt was wrong, you know, to be so scornful. A white goose is exactly what
her son wants. But look how badly the world is arranged. Such white birds cannot be got for nothing and he has not
enough money even to buy a ribbon. Who knows! Maybe it was this which gave that tragic quality to his pose by the
mantelpiece over there. Yes, that was it. Though no doubt I didn’t see it then. As he didn’t offer to move after I had
done speaking I became quite unaffectedly sorry and advised him very gently to dismiss me from his mind definitely. He
moved forward then and said to me in his usual voice and with his usual smile that it would have been excellent advice
but unfortunately I was one of those women who can’t be dismissed at will. And as I shook my head he insisted rather
darkly: ‘Oh, yes, Dona Rita, it is so. Cherish no illusions about that fact.’ It sounded so threatening that in my
surprise I didn’t even acknowledge his parting bow. He went out of that false situation like a wounded man retreating
after a fight. No, I have nothing to reproach myself with. I did nothing. I led him into nothing. Whatever illusions
have passed through my head I kept my distance, and he was so loyal to what he seemed to think the redeeming
proprieties of the situation that he has gone from me for good without so much as kissing the tips of my fingers. He
must have felt like a man who had betrayed himself for nothing. It’s horrible. It’s the fault of that enormous fortune
of mine, and I wish with all my heart that I could give it to him; for he couldn’t help his hatred of the thing that
is: and as to his love, which is just as real, well — could I have rushed away from him to shut myself up in a convent?
Could I? After all I have a right to my share of daylight.”

Chapter 5

I took my eyes from her face and became aware that dusk was beginning to steal into the room. How
strange it seemed. Except for the glazed rotunda part its long walls, divided into narrow panels separated by an order
of flat pilasters, presented, depicted on a black background and in vivid colours, slender women with butterfly wings
and lean youths with narrow birds’ wings. The effect was supposed to be Pompeiian and Rita and I had often laughed at
the delirious fancy of some enriched shopkeeper. But still it was a display of fancy, a sign of grace; but at that
moment these figures appeared to me weird and intrusive and strangely alive in their attenuated grace of unearthly
beings concealing a power to see and hear.

Without words, without gestures, Dona Rita was heard again. “It may have been as near coming to pass as this.” She
showed me the breadth of her little finger nail. “Yes, as near as that. Why? How? Just like that, for nothing. Because
it had come up. Because a wild notion had entered a practical old woman’s head. Yes. And the best of it is that I have
nothing to complain of. Had I surrendered I would have been perfectly safe with these two. It is they or rather he who
couldn’t trust me, or rather that something which I express, which I stand for. Mills would never tell me what it was.
Perhaps he didn’t know exactly himself. He said it was something like genius. My genius! Oh, I am not conscious of it,
believe me, I am not conscious of it. But if I were I wouldn’t pluck it out and cast it away. I am ashamed of nothing,
of nothing! Don’t be stupid enough to think that I have the slightest regret. There is no regret. First of all because
I am I— and then because . . . My dear, believe me, I have had a horrible time of it myself lately.”

This seemed to be the last word. Outwardly quiet, all the time, it was only then that she became composed enough to
light an enormous cigarette of the same pattern as those made specially for the king — por el Rey! After a time,
tipping the ash into the bowl on her left hand, she asked me in a friendly, almost tender, tone:

“What are you thinking of, amigo?”

“I was thinking of your immense generosity. You want to give a crown to one man, a fortune to another. That is very
fine. But I suppose there is a limit to your generosity somewhere.”

“I don’t see why there should be any limit — to fine intentions! Yes, one would like to pay ransom and be done with
it all.”

“That’s the feeling of a captive; and yet somehow I can’t think of you as ever having been anybody’s captive.”

“You do display some wonderful insight sometimes. My dear, I begin to suspect that men are rather conceited about
their powers. They think they dominate us. Even exceptional men will think that; men too great for mere vanity, men
like Henry Allegre for instance, who by his consistent and serene detachment was certainly fit to dominate all sorts of
people. Yet for the most part they can only do it because women choose more or less consciously to let them do so.
Henry Allegre, if any man, might have been certain of his own power; and yet, look: I was a chit of a girl, I was
sitting with a book where I had no business to be, in his own garden, when he suddenly came upon me, an ignorant girl
of seventeen, a most uninviting creature with a tousled head, in an old black frock and shabby boots. I could have run
away. I was perfectly capable of it. But I stayed looking up at him and — in the end it was HE who went away and it was
I who stayed.”

“Consciously?” I murmured.

“Consciously? You may just as well ask my shadow that lay so still by me on the young grass in that morning
sunshine. I never knew before how still I could keep. It wasn’t the stillness of terror. I remained, knowing perfectly
well that if I ran he was not the man to run after me. I remember perfectly his deep-toned, politely indifferent
‘Restez donc.’ He was mistaken. Already then I hadn’t the slightest intention to move. And if you ask me again how far
conscious all this was the nearest answer I can make you is this: that I remained on purpose, but I didn’t know for
what purpose I remained. Really, that couldn’t be expected. . . . Why do you sigh like this? Would you have
preferred me to be idiotically innocent or abominably wise?”

“These are not the questions that trouble me,” I said. “If I sighed it is because I am weary.”

“And getting stiff, too, I should say, in this Pompeiian armchair. You had better get out of it and sit on this
couch as you always used to do. That, at any rate, is not Pompeiian. You have been growing of late extremely formal, I
don’t know why. If it is a pose then for goodness’ sake drop it. Are you going to model yourself on Captain Blunt? You
couldn’t, you know. You are too young.”

“I don’t want to model myself on anybody,” I said. “And anyway Blunt is too romantic; and, moreover, he has been and
is yet in love with you — a thing that requires some style, an attitude, something of which I am altogether
incapable.”

“You know it isn’t so stupid, this what you have just said. Yes, there is something in this.”

“I am not stupid,” I protested, without much heat.

“Oh, yes, you are. You don’t know the world enough to judge. You don’t know how wise men can be. Owls are nothing to
them. Why do you try to look like an owl? There are thousands and thousands of them waiting for me outside the door:
the staring, hissing beasts. You don’t know what a relief of mental ease and intimacy you have been to me in the
frankness of gestures and speeches and thoughts, sane or insane, that we have been throwing at each other. I have known
nothing of this in my life but with you. There had always been some fear, some constraint, lurking in the background
behind everybody, everybody — except you, my friend.”

“An unmannerly, Arcadian state of affairs. I am glad you like it. Perhaps it’s because you were intelligent enough
to perceive that I was not in love with you in any sort of style.”

“No, you were always your own self, unwise and reckless and with something in it kindred to mine, if I may say so
without offence.”

“You may say anything without offence. But has it never occurred to your sagacity that I just, simply, loved
you?”

“Just — simply,” she repeated in a wistful tone.

“You didn’t want to trouble your head about it, is that it?”

“My poor head. From your tone one might think you yearned to cut it off. No, my dear, I have made up my mind not to
lose my head.”

“You would be astonished to know how little I care for your mind.”

“Would I? Come and sit on the couch all the same,” she said after a moment of hesitation. Then, as I did not move at
once, she added with indifference: “You may sit as far away as you like, it’s big enough, goodness knows.”

The light was ebbing slowly out of the rotunda and to my bodily eyes she was beginning to grow shadowy. I sat down
on the couch and for a long time no word passed between us. We made no movement. We did not even turn towards each
other. All I was conscious of was the softness of the seat which seemed somehow to cause a relaxation of my stern mood,
I won’t say against my will but without any will on my part. Another thing I was conscious of, strangely enough, was
the enormous brass bowl for cigarette ends. Quietly, with the least possible action, Dona Rita moved it to the other
side of her motionless person. Slowly, the fantastic women with butterflies’ wings and the slender-limbed youths with
the gorgeous pinions on their shoulders were vanishing into their black backgrounds with an effect of silent
discretion, leaving us to ourselves.

I felt suddenly extremely exhausted, absolutely overcome with fatigue since I had moved; as if to sit on that
Pompeiian chair had been a task almost beyond human strength, a sort of labour that must end in collapse. I fought
against it for a moment and then my resistance gave way. Not all at once but as if yielding to an irresistible pressure
(for I was not conscious of any irresistible attraction) I found myself with my head resting, with a weight I felt must
be crushing, on Dona Rita’s shoulder which yet did not give way, did not flinch at all. A faint scent of violets filled
the tragic emptiness of my head and it seemed impossible to me that I should not cry from sheer weakness. But I
remained dry-eyed. I only felt myself slipping lower and lower and I caught her round the waist clinging to her not
from any intention but purely by instinct. All that time she hadn’t stirred. There was only the slight movement of her
breathing that showed her to be alive; and with closed eyes I imagined her to be lost in thought, removed by an
incredible meditation while I clung to her, to an immense distance from the earth. The distance must have been immense
because the silence was so perfect, the feeling as if of eternal stillness. I had a distinct impression of being in
contact with an infinity that had the slightest possible rise and fall, was pervaded by a warm, delicate scent of
violets and through which came a hand from somewhere to rest lightly on my head. Presently my ear caught the faint and
regular pulsation of her heart, firm and quick, infinitely touching in its persistent mystery, disclosing itself into
my very ear — and my felicity became complete.

It was a dreamlike state combined with a dreamlike sense of insecurity. Then in that warm and scented infinity, or
eternity, in which I rested lost in bliss but ready for any catastrophe, I heard the distant, hardly audible, and fit
to strike terror into the heart, ringing of a bell. At this sound the greatness of spaces departed. I felt the world
close about me; the world of darkened walls, of very deep grey dusk against the panes, and I asked in a pained
voice:

“Why did you ring, Rita?”

There was a bell rope within reach of her hand. I had not felt her move, but she said very low:

“I rang for the lights.”

“You didn’t want the lights.”

“It was time,” she whispered secretly.

Somewhere within the house a door slammed. I got away from her feeling small and weak as if the best part of me had
been torn away and irretrievably lost. Rose must have been somewhere near the door.

“It’s abominable,” I murmured to the still, idol-like shadow on the couch.

The answer was a hurried, nervous whisper: “I tell you it was time. I rang because I had no strength to push you
away.”

I suffered a moment of giddiness before the door opened, light streamed in, and Rose entered, preceding a man in a
green baize apron whom I had never seen, carrying on an enormous tray three Argand lamps fitted into vases of Pompeiian
form. Rose distributed them over the room. In the flood of soft light the winged youths and the butterfly women
reappeared on the panels, affected, gorgeous, callously unconscious of anything having happened during their absence.
Rose attended to the lamp on the nearest mantelpiece, then turned about and asked in a confident undertone.

“Monsieur dine?”

I had lost myself with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, but I heard the words distinctly. I heard also
the silence which ensued. I sat up and took the responsibility of the answer on myself.

“Impossible. I am going to sea this evening.”

This was perfectly true only I had totally forgotten it till then. For the last two days my being was no longer
composed of memories but exclusively of sensations of the most absorbing, disturbing, exhausting nature. I was like a
man who has been buffeted by the sea or by a mob till he loses all hold on the world in the misery of his helplessness.
But now I was recovering. And naturally the first thing I remembered was the fact that I was going to sea.

“You have heard, Rose,” Dona Rita said at last with some impatience.

The girl waited a moment longer before she said:

“Oh, yes! There is a man waiting for Monsieur in the hall. A seaman.”

It could be no one but Dominic. It dawned upon me that since the evening of our return I had not been near him or
the ship, which was completely unusual, unheard of, and well calculated to startle Dominic.

“I have seen him before,” continued Rose, “and as he told me he has been pursuing Monsieur all the afternoon and
didn’t like to go away without seeing Monsieur for a moment, I proposed to him to wait in the hall till Monsieur was at
liberty.”

I said: “Very well,” and with a sudden resumption of her extremely busy, not-a-moment-to-lose manner Rose departed
from the room. I lingered in an imaginary world full of tender light, of unheard-of colours, with a mad riot of flowers
and an inconceivable happiness under the sky arched above its yawning precipices, while a feeling of awe enveloped me
like its own proper atmosphere. But everything vanished at the sound of Dona Rita’s loud whisper full of boundless
dismay, such as to make one’s hair stir on one’s head.

“Mon Dieu! And what is going to happen now?”

She got down from the couch and walked to a window. When the lights had been brought into the room all the panes had
turned inky black; for the night had come and the garden was full of tall bushes and trees screening off the gas lamps
of the main alley of the Prado. Whatever the question meant she was not likely to see an answer to it outside. But her
whisper had offended me, had hurt something infinitely deep, infinitely subtle and infinitely clear-eyed in my nature.
I said after her from the couch on which I had remained, “Don’t lose your composure. You will always have some sort of
bell at hand.”

I saw her shrug her uncovered shoulders impatiently. Her forehead was against the very blackness of the panes;
pulled upward from the beautiful, strong nape of her neck, the twisted mass of her tawny hair was held high upon her
head by the arrow of gold.

“You set up for being unforgiving,” she said without anger.

I sprang to my feet while she turned about and came towards me bravely, with a wistful smile on her bold, adolescent
face.

“It seems to me,” she went on in a voice like a wave of love itself, “that one should try to understand before one
sets up for being unforgiving. Forgiveness is a very fine word. It is a fine invocation.”

“There are other fine words in the language such as fascination, fidelity, also frivolity; and as for invocations
there are plenty of them, too; for instance: alas, heaven help me.”

We stood very close together, her narrow eyes were as enigmatic as ever, but that face, which, like some ideal
conception of art, was incapable of anything like untruth and grimace, expressed by some mysterious means such a depth
of infinite patience that I felt profoundly ashamed of myself.

“This thing is beyond words altogether,” I said. “Beyond forgiveness, beyond forgetting, beyond anger or jealousy
. . . . There is nothing between us two that could make us act together.”

“Then we must fall back perhaps on something within us, that — you admit it? — we have in common.”

“Don’t be childish,” I said. “You give one with a perpetual and intense freshness feelings and sensations that are
as old as the world itself, and you imagine that your enchantment can be broken off anywhere, at any time! But it can’t
be broken. And forgetfulness, like everything else, can only come from you. It’s an impossible situation to stand up
against.”

She listened with slightly parted lips as if to catch some further resonances.

“There is a sort of generous ardour about you,” she said, “which I don’t really understand. No, I don’t know it.
Believe me, it is not of myself I am thinking. And you — you are going out to-night to make another landing.”

“Yes, it is a fact that before many hours I will be sailing away from you to try my luck once more.”

“Your wonderful luck,” she breathed out.

“Oh, yes, I am wonderfully lucky. Unless the luck really is yours — in having found somebody like me, who cares at
the same time so much and so little for what you have at heart.”

“What time will you be leaving the harbour?” she asked.

“Some time between midnight and daybreak. Our men may be a little late in joining, but certainly we will be gone
before the first streak of light.”

“Freedom!” I protested. “I am a slave to my word. There will be a siring of carts and mules on a certain part of the
coast, and a most ruffianly lot of men, men you understand, men with wives and children and sweethearts, who from the
very moment they start on a trip risk a bullet in the head at any moment, but who have a perfect conviction that I will
never fail them. That’s my freedom. I wonder what they would think if they knew of your existence.”

“I don’t exist,” she said.

“That’s easy to say. But I will go as if you didn’t exist — yet only because you do exist. You exist in me. I don’t
know where I end and you begin. You have got into my heart and into my veins and into my brain.”

“Take this fancy out and trample it down in the dust,” she said in a tone of timid entreaty.

“Heroically,” I suggested with the sarcasm of despair.

“Well, yes, heroically,” she said; and there passed between us dim smiles, I have no doubt of the most touching
imbecility on earth. We were standing by then in the middle of the room with its vivid colours on a black background,
with its multitude of winged figures with pale limbs, with hair like halos or flames, all strangely tense in their
strained, decorative attitudes. Dona Rita made a step towards me, and as I attempted to seize her hand she flung her
arms round my neck. I felt their strength drawing me towards her and by a sort of blind and desperate effort I
resisted. And all the time she was repeating with nervous insistence:

“But it is true that you will go. You will surely. Not because of those people but because of me. You will go away
because you feel you must.”

With every word urging me to get away, her clasp tightened, she hugged my head closer to her breast. I submitted,
knowing well that I could free myself by one more effort which it was in my power to make. But before I made it, in a
sort of desperation, I pressed a long kiss into the hollow of her throat. And lo — there was no need for any effort.
With a stifled cry of surprise her arms fell off me as if she had been shot. I must have been giddy, and perhaps we
both were giddy, but the next thing I knew there was a good foot of space between us in the peaceful glow of the
ground-glass globes, in the everlasting stillness of the winged figures. Something in the quality of her exclamation,
something utterly unexpected, something I had never heard before, and also the way she was looking at me with a sort of
incredulous, concentrated attention, disconcerted me exceedingly. I knew perfectly well what I had done and yet I felt
that I didn’t understand what had happened. I became suddenly abashed and I muttered that I had better go and dismiss
that poor Dominic. She made no answer, gave no sign. She stood there lost in a vision — or was it a sensation? — of the
most absorbing kind. I hurried out into the hall, shamefaced, as if I were making my escape while she wasn’t looking.
And yet I felt her looking fixedly at me, with a sort of stupefaction on her features — in her whole attitude — as
though she had never even heard of such a thing as a kiss in her life.

A dim lamp (of Pompeiian form) hanging on a long chain left the hall practically dark. Dominic, advancing towards me
from a distant corner, was but a little more opaque shadow than the others. He had expected me on board every moment
till about three o’clock, but as I didn’t turn up and gave no sign of life in any other way he started on his hunt. He
sought news of me from the garcons at the various cafes, from the cochers de fiacre in front of the Exchange, from the
tobacconist lady at the counter of the fashionable Debit de Tabac, from the old man who sold papers outside the cercle,
and from the flower-girl at the door of the fashionable restaurant where I had my table. That young woman, whose
business name was Irma, had come on duty about mid-day. She said to Dominic: “I think I’ve seen all his friends this
morning but I haven’t seen him for a week. What has become of him?”

“That’s exactly what I want to know,” Dominic replied in a fury and then went back to the harbour on the chance that
I might have called either on board or at Madame Leonore’s cafe.

I expressed to him my surprise that he should fuss about me like an old hen over a chick. It wasn’t like him at all.
And he said that “en effet” it was Madame Leonore who wouldn’t give him any peace. He hoped I wouldn’t mind, it was
best to humour women in little things; and so he started off again, made straight for the street of the Consuls, was
told there that I wasn’t at home but the woman of the house looked so funny that he didn’t know what to make of it.
Therefore, after some hesitation, he took the liberty to inquire at this house, too, and being told that I couldn’t be
disturbed, had made up his mind not to go on board without actually setting his eyes on me and hearing from my own lips
that nothing was changed as to sailing orders.

“There is nothing changed, Dominic,” I said.

“No change of any sort?” he insisted, looking very sombre and speaking gloomily from under his black moustaches in
the dim glow of the alabaster lamp hanging above his head. He peered at me in an extraordinary manner as if he wanted
to make sure that I had all my limbs about me. I asked him to call for my bag at the other house, on his way to the
harbour, and he departed reassured, not, however, without remarking ironically that ever since she saw that American
cavalier Madame Leonore was not easy in her mind about me.

As I stood alone in the hall, without a sound of any sort, Rose appeared before me.

“Monsieur will dine after all,” she whispered calmly,

“My good girl, I am going to sea to-night.”

“What am I going to do with Madame?” she murmured to herself. “She will insist on returning to Paris.”

“Oh, have you heard of it?”

“I never get more than two hours’ notice,” she said. “But I know how it will be,” her voice lost its calmness. “I
can look after Madame up to a certain point but I cannot be altogether responsible. There is a dangerous person who is
everlastingly trying to see Madame alone. I have managed to keep him off several times but there is a beastly old
journalist who is encouraging him in his attempts, and I daren’t even speak to Madame about it.”

“What sort of person do you mean?”

“Why, a man,” she said scornfully.

I snatched up my coat and hat.

“Aren’t there dozens of them?”

“Oh! But this one is dangerous. Madame must have given him a hold on her in some way. I ought not to talk like this
about Madame and I wouldn’t to anybody but Monsieur. I am always on the watch, but what is a poor girl to do?
. . . Isn’t Monsieur going back to Madame?”

“No, I am not going back. Not this time.” A mist seemed to fall before my eyes. I could hardly see the girl standing
by the closed door of the Pempeiian room with extended hand, as if turned to stone. But my voice was firm enough. “Not
this time,” I repeated, and became aware of the great noise of the wind amongst the trees, with the lashing of a rain
squall against the door.

“Perhaps some other time,” I added.

I heard her say twice to herself: “Mon Dieu! Mon, Dieu!” and then a dismayed: “What can Monsieur expect me to do?”
But I had to appear insensible to her distress and that not altogether because, in fact, I had no option but to go
away. I remember also a distinct wilfulness in my attitude and something half-contemptuous in my words as I laid my
hand on the knob of the front door.

“You will tell Madame that I am gone. It will please her. Tell her that I am gone — heroically.”

Rose had come up close to me. She met my words by a despairing outward movement of her hands as though she were
giving everything up.

“I see it clearly now that Madame has no friends,” she declared with such a force of restrained bitterness that it
nearly made me pause. But the very obscurity of actuating motives drove me on and I stepped out through the doorway
muttering: “Everything is as Madame wishes it.”

She shot at me a swift: “You should resist,” of an extraordinary intensity, but I strode on down the path. Then
Rose’s schooled temper gave way at last and I heard her angry voice screaming after me furiously through the wind and
rain: “No! Madame has no friends. Not one!”

PART FIVE

Chapter 1

That night I didn’t get on board till just before midnight and Dominic could not conceal his relief
at having me safely there. Why he should have been so uneasy it was impossible to say but at the time I had a sort of
impression that my inner destruction (it was nothing less) had affected my appearance, that my doom was as it were
written on my face. I was a mere receptacle for dust and ashes, a living testimony to the vanity of all things. My very
thoughts were like a ghostly rustle of dead leaves. But we had an extremely successful trip, and for most of the time
Dominic displayed an unwonted jocularity of a dry and biting kind with which, he maintained, he had been infected by no
other person than myself. As, with all his force of character, he was very responsive to the moods of those he liked I
have no doubt he spoke the truth. But I know nothing about it. The observer, more or less alert, whom each of us
carries in his own consciousness, failed me altogether, had turned away his face in sheer horror, or else had fainted
from the strain. And thus I had to live alone, unobserved even by myself.

But the trip had been successful. We re-entered the harbour very quietly as usual and when our craft had been moored
unostentatiously amongst the plebeian stone-carriers, Dominic, whose grim joviality had subsided in the last
twenty-four hours of our homeward run, abandoned me to myself as though indeed I had been a doomed man. He only stuck
his head for a moment into our little cuddy where I was changing my clothes and being told in answer to his question
that I had no special orders to give went ashore without waiting for me.

Generally we used to step on the quay together and I never failed to enter for a moment Madame Leonore’s cafe. But
this time when I got on the quay Dominic was nowhere to be seen. What was it? Abandonment — discretion — or had he
quarrelled with his Leonore before leaving on the trip?

My way led me past the cafe and through the glass panes I saw that he was already there. On the other side of the
little marble table Madame Leonore, leaning with mature grace on her elbow, was listening to him absorbed. Then I
passed on and — what would you have! — I ended by making my way into the street of the Consuls. I had nowhere else to
go. There were my things in the apartment on the first floor. I couldn’t bear the thought of meeting anybody I
knew.

The feeble gas flame in the hall was still there, on duty, as though it had never been turned off since I last
crossed the hall at half-past eleven in the evening to go to the harbour. The small flame had watched me letting myself
out; and now, exactly of the same size, the poor little tongue of light (there was something wrong with that burner)
watched me letting myself in, as indeed it had done many times before. Generally the impression was that of entering an
untenanted house, but this time before I could reach the foot of the stairs Therese glided out of the passage leading
into the studio. After the usual exclamations she assured me that everything was ready for me upstairs, had been for
days, and offered to get me something to eat at once. I accepted and said I would be down in the studio in half an
hour. I found her there by the side of the laid table ready for conversation. She began by telling me — the dear, poor
young Monsieur — in a sort of plaintive chant, that there were no letters for me, no letters of any kind, no letters
from anybody. Glances of absolutely terrifying tenderness mingled with flashes of cunning swept over me from head to
foot while I tried to eat.

She screwed up her mouth as if she had a twinge of toothache and assured me that the wine belonged to the house. I
would have to pay her for it. As far as personal feelings go, Blunt, who addressed her always with polite seriousness,
was not a favourite with her. The “charming, brave Monsieur” was now fighting for the King and religion against the
impious Liberals. He went away the very morning after I had left and, oh! she remembered, he had asked her before going
away whether I was still in the house. Wanted probably to say good-bye to me, shake my hand, the dear, polite
Monsieur.

I let her run on in dread expectation of what she would say next but she stuck to the subject of Blunt for some time
longer. He had written to her once about some of his things which he wanted her to send to Paris to his mother’s
address; but she was going to do nothing of the kind. She announced this with a pious smile; and in answer to my
questions I discovered that it was a stratagem to make Captain Blunt return to the house.

“You will get yourself into trouble with the police, Mademoiselle Therese, if you go on like that,” I said. But she
was as obstinate as a mule and assured me with the utmost confidence that many people would be ready to defend a poor
honest girl. There was something behind this attitude which I could not fathom. Suddenly she fetched a deep sigh.

“Our Rita, too, will end by coming to her sister.”

The name for which I had been waiting deprived me of speech for the moment. The poor mad sinner had rushed off to
some of her wickednesses in Paris. Did I know? No? How could she tell whether I did know or not? Well! I had hardly
left the house, so to speak, when Rita was down with her maid behaving as if the house did really still belong to her.
. .

“What time was it?” I managed to ask. And with the words my life itself was being forced out through my lips. But
Therese, not noticing anything strange about me, said it was something like half-past seven in the morning. The “poor
sinner” was all in black as if she were going to church (except for her expression, which was enough to shock any
honest person), and after ordering her with frightful menaces not to let anybody know she was in the house she rushed
upstairs and locked herself up in my bedroom, while “that French creature” (whom she seemed to love more than her own
sister) went into my salon and hid herself behind the window curtain.

I had recovered sufficiently to ask in a quiet natural voice whether Dona Rita and Captain Blunt had seen each
other. Apparently they had not seen each other. The polite captain had looked so stern while packing up his kit that
Therese dared not speak to him at all. And he was in a hurry, too. He had to see his dear mother off to Paris before
his own departure. Very stern. But he shook her hand with a very nice bow.

Therese elevated her right hand for me to see. It was broad and short with blunt fingers, as usual. The pressure of
Captain Blunt’s handshake had not altered its unlovely shape.

“What was the good of telling him that our Rita was here?” went on Therese. “I would have been ashamed of her coming
here and behaving as if the house belonged to her! I had already said some prayers at his intention at the half-past
six mass, the brave gentleman. That maid of my sister Rita was upstairs watching him drive away with her evil eyes, but
I made a sign of the cross after the fiacre, and then I went upstairs and banged at your door, my dear kind young
Monsieur, and shouted to Rita that she had no right to lock herself in any of my locataires’ rooms. At last she opened
it — and what do you think? All her hair was loose over her shoulders. I suppose it all came down when she flung her
hat on your bed. I noticed when she arrived that her hair wasn’t done properly. She used your brushes to do it up again
in front of your glass.”

“Wait a moment,” I said, and jumped up, upsetting my wine to run upstairs as fast as I could. I lighted the gas, all
the three jets in the middle of the room, the jet by the bedside and two others flanking the dressing-table. I had been
struck by the wild hope of finding a trace of Rita’s passage, a sign or something. I pulled out all the drawers
violently, thinking that perhaps she had hidden there a scrap of paper, a note. It was perfectly mad. Of course there
was no chance of that. Therese would have seen to it. I picked up one after another all the various objects on the
dressing-table. On laying my hands on the brushes I had a profound emotion, and with misty eyes I examined them
meticulously with the new hope of finding one of Rita’s tawny hairs entangled amongst the bristles by a miraculous
chance. But Therese would have done away with that chance, too. There was nothing to be seen, though I held them up to
the light with a beating heart. It was written that not even that trace of her passage on the earth should remain with
me; not to help but, as it were, to soothe the memory. Then I lighted a cigarette and came downstairs slowly. My
unhappiness became dulled, as the grief of those who mourn for the dead gets dulled in the overwhelming sensation that
everything is over, that a part of themselves is lost beyond recall taking with it all the savour of life.

I discovered Therese still on the very same spot of the floor, her hands folded over each other and facing my empty
chair before which the spilled wine had soaked a large portion of the table-cloth. She hadn’t moved at all. She hadn’t
even picked up the overturned glass. But directly I appeared she began to speak in an ingratiating voice.

And again I became inordinately agitated as though it were my absolute fate to be everlastingly dying and reviving
to the tormenting fact of her existence. Perhaps she had taken something? Anything. Some small object. I thought
suddenly of a Rhenish-stone match-box. Perhaps it was that. I didn’t remember having seen it when upstairs. I wanted to
make sure at once. At once. But I commanded myself to sit still.

“And she so wealthy,” Therese went on. “Even you with your dear generous little heart can do nothing for our Rita.
No man can do anything for her — except perhaps one, but she is so evilly disposed towards him that she wouldn’t even
see him, if in the goodness of his forgiving heart he were to offer his hand to her. It’s her bad conscience that
frightens her. He loves her more than his life, the dear, charitable man.”

“You mean some rascal in Paris that I believe persecutes Dona Rita. Listen, Mademoiselle Therese, if you know where
he hangs out you had better let him have word to be careful I believe he, too, is mixed up in the Carlist intrigue.
Don’t you know that your sister can get him shut up any day or get him expelled by the police?”

Therese sighed deeply and put on a look of pained virtue.

“Oh, the hardness of her heart. She tried to be tender with me. She is awful. I said to her, ‘Rita, have you sold
your soul to the Devil?’ and she shouted like a fiend: ‘For happiness! Ha, ha, ha!’ She threw herself backwards on that
couch in your room and laughed and laughed and laughed as if I had been tickling her, and she drummed on the floor with
the heels of her shoes. She is possessed. Oh, my dear innocent young Monsieur, you have never seen anything like that.
That wicked girl who serves her rushed in with a tiny glass bottle and put it to her nose; but I had a mind to run out
and fetch the priest from the church where I go to early mass. Such a nice, stout, severe man. But that false, cheating
creature (I am sure she is robbing our Rita from morning to night), she talked to our Rita very low and quieted her
down. I am sure I don’t know what she said. She must be leagued with the devil. And then she asked me if I would go
down and make a cup of chocolate for her Madame. Madame — that’s our Rita. Madame! It seems they were going off
directly to Paris and her Madame had had nothing to eat since the morning of the day before. Fancy me being ordered to
make chocolate for our Rita! However, the poor thing looked so exhausted and white-faced that I went. Ah! the devil can
give you an awful shake up if he likes.”

Therese fetched another deep sigh and raising her eyes looked at me with great attention. I preserved an inscrutable
expression, for I wanted to hear all she had to tell me of Rita. I watched her with the greatest anxiety composing her
face into a cheerful expression.

“So Dona Rita is gone to Paris?” I asked negligently.

“Yes, my dear Monsieur. I believe she went straight to the railway station from here. When she first got up from the
couch she could hardly stand. But before, while she was drinking the chocolate which I made for her, I tried to get her
to sign a paper giving over the house to me, but she only closed her eyes and begged me to try and be a good sister and
leave her alone for half an hour. And she lying there looking as if she wouldn’t live a day. But she always hated
me.”

I said bitterly, “You needn’t have worried her like this. If she had not lived for another day you would have had
this house and everything else besides; a bigger bit than even your wolfish throat can swallow, Mademoiselle
Therese.”

I then said a few more things indicative of my disgust with her rapacity, but they were quite inadequate, as I
wasn’t able to find words strong enough to express my real mind. But it didn’t matter really because I don’t think
Therese heard me at all. She seemed lost in rapt amazement.

“What do you say, my dear Monsieur? What! All for me without any sort of paper?”

She appeared distracted by my curt: “Yes.” Therese believed in my truthfulness. She believed me implicitly, except
when I was telling her the truth about herself, mincing no words, when she used to stand smilingly bashful as if I were
overwhelming her with compliments. I expected her to continue the horrible tale but apparently she had found something
to think about which checked the flow. She fetched another sigh and muttered:

“Then the law can be just, if it does not require any paper. After all, I am her sister.”

“It’s very difficult to believe that — at sight,” I said roughly.

“Ah, but that I could prove. There are papers for that.”

After this declaration she began to clear the table, preserving a thoughtful silence.

I was not very surprised at the news of Dona Rita’s departure for Paris. It was not necessary to ask myself why she
had gone. I didn’t even ask myself whether she had left the leased Villa on the Prado for ever. Later talking again
with Therese, I learned that her sister had given it up for the use of the Carlist cause and that some sort of
unofficial Consul, a Carlist agent of some sort, either was going to live there or had already taken possession. This,
Rita herself had told her before her departure on that agitated morning spent in the house — in my rooms. A close
investigation demonstrated to me that there was nothing missing from them. Even the wretched match-box which I really
hoped was gone turned up in a drawer after I had, delightedly, given it up. It was a great blow. She might have taken
that at least! She knew I used to carry it about with me constantly while ashore. She might have taken it! Apparently
she meant that there should be no bond left even of that kind; and yet it was a long time before I gave up visiting and
revisiting all the corners of all possible receptacles for something that she might have left behind on purpose. It was
like the mania of those disordered minds who spend their days hunting for a treasure. I hoped for a forgotten hairpin,
for some tiny piece of ribbon. Sometimes at night I reflected that such hopes were altogether insensate; but I remember
once getting up at two in the morning to search for a little cardboard box in the bathroom, into which, I remembered, I
had not looked before. Of course it was empty; and, anyway, Rita could not possibly have known of its existence. I got
back to bed shivering violently, though the night was warm, and with a distinct impression that this thing would end by
making me mad. It was no longer a question of “this sort of thing” killing me. The moral atmosphere of this torture was
different. It would make me mad. And at that thought great shudders ran down my prone body, because, once, I had
visited a famous lunatic asylum where they had shown me a poor wretch who was mad, apparently, because he thought he
had been abominably fooled by a woman. They told me that his grievance was quite imaginary. He was a young man with a
thin fair beard, huddled up on the edge of his bed, hugging himself forlornly; and his incessant and lamentable wailing
filled the long bare corridor, striking a chill into one’s heart long before one came to the door of his cell.

And there was no one from whom I could hear, to whom I could speak, with whom I could evoke the image of Rita. Of
course I could utter that word of four letters to Therese; but Therese for some reason took it into her head to avoid
all topics connected with her sister. I felt as if I could pull out great handfuls of her hair hidden modestly under
the black handkerchief of which the ends were sometimes tied under her chin. But, really, I could not have given her
any intelligible excuse for that outrage. Moreover, she was very busy from the very top to the very bottom of the
house, which she persisted in running alone because she couldn’t make up her mind to part with a few francs every month
to a servant. It seemed to me that I was no longer such a favourite with her as I used to be. That, strange to say, was
exasperating, too. It was as if some idea, some fruitful notion had killed in her all the softer and more humane
emotions. She went about with brooms and dusters wearing an air of sanctimonious thoughtfulness.

The man who to a certain extent took my place in Therese’s favour was the old father of the dancing girls inhabiting
the ground floor. In a tall hat and a well-to-do dark blue overcoat he allowed himself to be button-holed in the hall
by Therese who would talk to him interminably with downcast eyes. He smiled gravely down at her, and meanwhile tried to
edge towards the front door. I imagine he didn’t put a great value on Therese’s favour. Our stay in harbour was
prolonged this time and I kept indoors like an invalid. One evening I asked that old man to come in and drink and smoke
with me in the studio. He made no difficulties to accept, brought his wooden pipe with him, and was very entertaining
in a pleasant voice. One couldn’t tell whether he was an uncommon person or simply a ruffian, but in any case with his
white beard he looked quite venerable. Naturally he couldn’t give me much of his company as he had to look closely
after his girls and their admirers; not that the girls were unduly frivolous, but of course being very young they had
no experience. They were friendly creatures with pleasant, merry voices and he was very much devoted to them. He was a
muscular man with a high colour and silvery locks curling round his bald pate and over his ears, like a barocco
apostle. I had an idea that he had had a lurid past and had seen some fighting in his youth. The admirers of the two
girls stood in great awe of him, from instinct no doubt, because his behaviour to them was friendly and even somewhat
obsequious, yet always with a certain truculent glint in his eye that made them pause in everything but their
generosity — which was encouraged. I sometimes wondered whether those two careless, merry hard-working creatures
understood the secret moral beauty of the situation.

My real company was the dummy in the studio and I can’t say it was exactly satisfying. After taking possession of
the studio I had raised it tenderly, dusted its mangled limbs and insensible, hard-wood bosom, and then had propped it
up in a corner where it seemed to take on, of itself, a shy attitude. I knew its history. It was not an ordinary dummy.
One day, talking with Dona Rita about her sister, I had told her that I thought Therese used to knock it down on
purpose with a broom, and Dona Rita had laughed very much. This, she had said, was an instance of dislike from mere
instinct. That dummy had been made to measure years before. It had to wear for days and days the Imperial Byzantine
robes in which Dona Rita sat only once or twice herself; but of course the folds and bends of the stuff had to be
preserved as in the first sketch. Dona Rita described amusingly how she had to stand in the middle of her room while
Rose walked around her with a tape measure noting the figures down on a small piece of paper which was then sent to the
maker, who presently returned it with an angry letter stating that those proportions were altogether impossible in any
woman. Apparently Rose had muddled them all up; and it was a long time before the figure was finished and sent to the
Pavilion in a long basket to take on itself the robes and the hieratic pose of the Empress. Later, it wore with the
same patience the marvellous hat of the “Girl in the Hat.” But Dona Rita couldn’t understand how the poor thing ever
found its way to Marseilles minus its turnip head. Probably it came down with the robes and a quantity of precious
brocades which she herself had sent down from Paris. The knowledge of its origin, the contempt of Captain Blunt’s
references to it, with Therese’s shocked dislike of the dummy, invested that summary reproduction with a sort of charm,
gave me a faint and miserable illusion of the original, less artificial than a photograph, less precise, too.
. . . But it can’t be explained. I felt positively friendly to it as if it had been Rita’s trusted personal
attendant. I even went so far as to discover that it had a sort of grace of its own. But I never went so far as to
address set speeches to it where it lurked shyly in its corner, or drag it out from there for contemplation. I left it
in peace. I wasn’t mad. I was only convinced that I soon would be.

Chapter 2

Notwithstanding my misanthropy I had to see a few people on account of all these Royalist affairs
which I couldn’t very well drop, and in truth did not wish to drop. They were my excuse for remaining in Europe, which
somehow I had not the strength of mind to leave for the West Indies, or elsewhere. On the other hand, my adventurous
pursuit kept me in contact with the sea where I found occupation, protection, consolation, the mental relief of
grappling with concrete problems, the sanity one acquires from close contact with simple mankind, a little
self-confidence born from the dealings with the elemental powers of nature. I couldn’t give all that up. And besides
all this was related to Dona Rita. I had, as it were, received it all from her own hand, from that hand the clasp of
which was as frank as a man’s and yet conveyed a unique sensation. The very memory of it would go through me like a
wave of heat. It was over that hand that we first got into the habit of quarrelling, with the irritability of sufferers
from some obscure pain and yet half unconscious of their disease. Rita’s own spirit hovered over the troubled waters of
Legitimity. But as to the sound of the four magic letters of her name I was not very likely to hear it fall sweetly on
my ear. For instance, the distinguished personality in the world of finance with whom I had to confer several times,
alluded to the irresistible seduction of the power which reigned over my heart and my mind; which had a mysterious and
unforgettable face, the brilliance of sunshine together with the unfathomable splendour of the night as — Madame de
Lastaola. That’s how that steel-grey man called the greatest mystery of the universe. When uttering that assumed name
he would make for himself a guardedly solemn and reserved face as though he were afraid lest I should presume to smile,
lest he himself should venture to smile, and the sacred formality of our relations should be outraged beyond
mending.

He would refer in a studiously grave tone to Madame de Lastaola’s wishes, plans, activities, instructions,
movements; or picking up a letter from the usual litter of paper found on such men’s desks, glance at it to refresh his
memory; and, while the very sight of the handwriting would make my lips go dry, would ask me in a bloodless voice
whether perchance I had “a direct communication from — er — Paris lately.” And there would be other maddening
circumstances connected with those visits. He would treat me as a serious person having a clear view of certain
eventualities, while at the very moment my vision could see nothing but streaming across the wall at his back, abundant
and misty, unearthly and adorable, a mass of tawny hair that seemed to have hot sparks tangled in it. Another nuisance
was the atmosphere of Royalism, of Legitimacy, that pervaded the room, thin as air, intangible, as though no Legitimist
of flesh and blood had ever existed to the man’s mind except perhaps myself. He, of course, was just simply a banker, a
very distinguished, a very influential, and a very impeccable banker. He persisted also in deferring to my judgment and
sense with an over-emphasis called out by his perpetual surprise at my youth. Though he had seen me many times (I even
knew his wife) he could never get over my immature age. He himself was born about fifty years old, all complete, with
his iron-grey whiskers and his bilious eyes, which he had the habit of frequently closing during a conversation. On one
occasion he said to me. “By the by, the Marquis of Villarel is here for a time. He inquired after you the last time he
called on me. May I let him know that you are in town?”

I didn’t say anything to that. The Marquis of Villarel was the Don Rafael of Rita’s own story. What had I to do with
Spanish grandees? And for that matter what had she, the woman of all time, to do with all the villainous or splendid
disguises human dust takes upon itself? All this was in the past, and I was acutely aware that for me there was no
present, no future, nothing but a hollow pain, a vain passion of such magnitude that being locked up within my breast
it gave me an illusion of lonely greatness with my miserable head uplifted amongst the stars. But when I made up my
mind (which I did quickly, to be done with it) to call on the banker’s wife, almost the first thing she said to me was
that the Marquis de Villarel was “amongst us.” She said it joyously. If in her husband’s room at the bank legitimism
was a mere unpopulated principle, in her salon Legitimacy was nothing but persons. “Il m’a cause beaucoup de vous,” she
said as if there had been a joke in it of which I ought to be proud. I slunk away from her. I couldn’t believe that the
grandee had talked to her about me. I had never felt myself part of the great Royalist enterprise. I confess that I was
so indifferent to everything, so profoundly demoralized, that having once got into that drawing-room I hadn’t the
strength to get away; though I could see perfectly well my volatile hostess going from one to another of her
acquaintances in order to tell them with a little gesture, “Look! Over there — in that corner. That’s the notorious
Monsieur George.” At last she herself drove me out by coming to sit by me vivaciously and going into ecstasies over “ce
cher Monsieur Mills” and that magnificent Lord X; and ultimately, with a perfectly odious snap in the eyes and drop in
the voice, dragging in the name of Madame de Lastaola and asking me whether I was really so much in the confidence of
that astonishing person. “Vous devez bien regretter son depart pour Paris,” she cooed, looking with affected
bashfulness at her fan. . . . How I got out of the room I really don’t know. There was also a staircase. I
did not fall down it head first — that much I am certain of; and I also remember that I wandered for a long time about
the seashore and went home very late, by the way of the Prado, giving in passing a fearful glance at the Villa. It
showed not a gleam of light through the thin foliage of its trees.

I spent the next day with Dominic on board the little craft watching the shipwrights at work on her deck. From the
way they went about their business those men must have been perfectly sane; and I felt greatly refreshed by my company
during the day. Dominic, too, devoted himself to his business, but his taciturnity was sardonic. Then I dropped in at
the cafe and Madame Leonore’s loud “Eh, Signorino, here you are at last!” pleased me by its resonant friendliness. But
I found the sparkle of her black eyes as she sat down for a moment opposite me while I was having my drink rather
difficult to bear. That man and that woman seemed to know something. What did they know? At parting she pressed my hand
significantly. What did she mean? But I didn’t feel offended by these manifestations. The souls within these people’s
breasts were not volatile in the manner of slightly scented and inflated bladders. Neither had they the impervious
skins which seem the rule in the fine world that wants only to get on. Somehow they had sensed that there was something
wrong; and whatever impression they might have formed for themselves I had the certitude that it would not be for them
a matter of grins at my expense.

That day on returning home I found Therese looking out for me, a very unusual occurrence of late. She handed me a
card bearing the name of the Marquis de Villarel.

“How did you come by this?” I asked. She turned on at once the tap of her volubility and I was not surprised to
learn that the grandee had not done such an extraordinary thing as to call upon me in person. A young gentleman had
brought it. Such a nice young gentleman, she interjected with her piously ghoulish expression. He was not very tall. He
had a very smooth complexion (that woman was incorrigible) and a nice, tiny black moustache. Therese was sure that he
must have been an officer en las filas legitimas. With that notion in her head she had asked him about the welfare of
that other model of charm and elegance, Captain Blunt. To her extreme surprise the charming young gentleman with
beautiful eyes had apparently never heard of Blunt. But he seemed very much interested in his surroundings, looked all
round the hall, noted the costly wood of the door panels, paid some attention to the silver statuette holding up the
defective gas burner at the foot of the stairs, and, finally, asked whether this was in very truth the house of the
most excellent Senora Dona Rita de Lastaola. The question staggered Therese, but with great presence of mind she
answered the young gentleman that she didn’t know what excellence there was about it, but that the house was her
property, having been given to her by her own sister. At this the young gentleman looked both puzzled and angry, turned
on his heel, and got back into his fiacre. Why should people be angry with a poor girl who had never done a single
reprehensible thing in her whole life?

“I suppose our Rita does tell people awful lies about her poor sister.” She sighed deeply (she had several kinds of
sighs and this was the hopeless kind) and added reflectively, “Sin on sin, wickedness on wickedness! And the longer she
lives the worse it will be. It would be better for our Rita to be dead.”

I told “Mademoiselle Therese” that it was really impossible to tell whether she was more stupid or atrocious; but I
wasn’t really very much shocked. These outbursts did not signify anything in Therese. One got used to them. They were
merely the expression of her rapacity and her righteousness; so that our conversation ended by my asking her whether
she had any dinner ready for me that evening.

“What’s the good of getting you anything to eat, my dear young Monsieur,” she quizzed me tenderly. “You just only
peck like a little bird. Much better let me save the money for you.” It will show the super-terrestrial nature of my
misery when I say that I was quite surprised at Therese’s view of my appetite. Perhaps she was right. I certainly did
not know. I stared hard at her and in the end she admitted that the dinner was in fact ready that very moment.

The new young gentleman within Therese’s horizon didn’t surprise me very much. Villarel would travel with some sort
of suite, a couple of secretaries at least. I had heard enough of Carlist headquarters to know that the man had been
(very likely was still) Captain General of the Royal Bodyguard and was a person of great political (and domestic)
influence at Court. The card was, under its social form, a mere command to present myself before the grandee. No
Royalist devoted by conviction, as I must have appeared to him, could have mistaken the meaning. I put the card in my
pocket and after dining or not dining — I really don’t remember — spent the evening smoking in the studio, pursuing
thoughts of tenderness and grief, visions exalting and cruel. From time to time I looked at the dummy. I even got up
once from the couch on which I had been writhing like a worm and walked towards it as if to touch it, but refrained,
not from sudden shame but from sheer despair. By and by Therese drifted in. It was then late and, I imagine, she was on
her way to bed. She looked the picture of cheerful, rustic innocence and started propounding to me a conundrum which
began with the words:

“If our Rita were to die before long. . .”

She didn’t get any further because I had jumped up and frightened her by shouting: “Is she ill? What has happened?
Have you had a letter?”

She had had a letter. I didn’t ask her to show it to me, though I daresay she would have done so. I had an idea that
there was no meaning in anything, at least no meaning that mattered. But the interruption had made Therese apparently
forget her sinister conundrum. She observed me with her shrewd, unintelligent eyes for a bit, and then with the fatuous
remark about the Law being just she left me to the horrors of the studio. I believe I went to sleep there from sheer
exhaustion. Some time during the night I woke up chilled to the bone and in the dark. These were horrors and no
mistake. I dragged myself upstairs to bed past the indefatigable statuette holding up the ever-miserable light. The
black-and-white hall was like an ice-house.

The main consideration which induced me to call on the Marquis of Villarel was the fact that after all I was a
discovery of Dona Rita’s, her own recruit. My fidelity and steadfastness had been guaranteed by her and no one else. I
couldn’t bear the idea of her being criticized by every empty-headed chatterer belonging to the Cause. And as, apart
from that, nothing mattered much, why, then — I would get this over.

But it appeared that I had not reflected sufficiently on all the consequences of that step. First of all the sight
of the Villa looking shabbily cheerful in the sunshine (but not containing her any longer) was so perturbing that I
very nearly went away from the gate. Then when I got in after much hesitation — being admitted by the man in the green
baize apron who recognized me — the thought of entering that room, out of which she was gone as completely as if she
had been dead, gave me such an emotion that I had to steady myself against the table till the faintness was past. Yet I
was irritated as at a treason when the man in the baize apron instead of letting me into the Pompeiian dining-room
crossed the hall to another door not at all in the Pompeiian style (more Louis XV rather — that Villa was like a Salade
Russe of styles) and introduced me into a big, light room full of very modern furniture. The portrait en pied of an
officer in a sky-blue uniform hung on the end wall. The officer had a small head, a black beard cut square, a robust
body, and leaned with gauntleted hands on the simple hilt of a straight sword. That striking picture dominated a
massive mahogany desk, and, in front of this desk, a very roomy, tall-backed armchair of dark green velvet. I thought I
had been announced into an empty room till glancing along the extremely loud carpet I detected a pair of feet under the
armchair.

I advanced towards it and discovered a little man, who had made no sound or movement till I came into his view, sunk
deep in the green velvet. He altered his position slowly and rested his hollow, black, quietly burning eyes on my face
in prolonged scrutiny. I detected something comminatory in his yellow, emaciated countenance, but I believe now he was
simply startled by my youth. I bowed profoundly. He extended a meagre little hand.

“Take a chair, Don Jorge.”

He was very small, frail, and thin, but his voice was not languid, though he spoke hardly above his breath. Such was
the envelope and the voice of the fanatical soul belonging to the Grand-master of Ceremonies and Captain General of the
Bodyguard at the Headquarters of the Legitimist Court, now detached on a special mission. He was all fidelity,
inflexibility, and sombre conviction, but like some great saints he had very little body to keep all these merits
in.

“You are very young,” he remarked, to begin with. “The matters on which I desired to converse with you are very
grave.”

“I was under the impression that your Excellency wished to see me at once. But if your Excellency prefers it I will
return in, say, seven years’ time when I may perhaps be old enough to talk about grave matters.”

He didn’t stir hand or foot and not even the quiver of an eyelid proved that he had heard my shockingly unbecoming
retort.

“You have been recommended to us by a noble and loyal lady, in whom His Majesty — whom God preserve — reposes an
entire confidence. God will reward her as she deserves and you, too, Senor, according to the disposition you bring to
this great work which has the blessing (here he crossed himself) of our Holy Mother the Church.”

“I suppose your Excellency understands that in all this I am not looking for reward of any kind.”

At this he made a faint, almost ethereal grimace.

“I was speaking of the spiritual blessing which rewards the service of religion and will be of benefit to your
soul,” he explained with a slight touch of acidity. “The other is perfectly understood and your fidelity is taken for
granted. His Majesty — whom God preserve — has been already pleased to signify his satisfaction with your services to
the most noble and loyal Dona Rita by a letter in his own hand.”

Perhaps he expected me to acknowledge this announcement in some way, speech, or bow, or something, because before my
immobility he made a slight movement in his chair which smacked of impatience. “I am afraid, Senor, that you are
affected by the spirit of scoffing and irreverence which pervades this unhappy country of France in which both you and
I are strangers, I believe. Are you a young man of that sort?”

“I am a very good gun-runner, your Excellency,” I answered quietly.

He bowed his head gravely. “We are aware. But I was looking for the motives which ought to have their pure source in
religion.”

“I must confess frankly that I have not reflected on my motives,” I said. “It is enough for me to know that they are
not dishonourable and that anybody can see they are not the motives of an adventurer seeking some sordid
advantage.”

He had listened patiently and when he saw that there was nothing more to come he ended the discussion.

“Senor, we should reflect upon our motives. It is salutary for our conscience and is recommended (he crossed
himself) by our Holy Mother the Church. I have here certain letters from Paris on which I would consult your young
sagacity which is accredited to us by the most loyal Dona Rita.”

The sound of that name on his lips was simply odious. I was convinced that this man of forms and ceremonies and
fanatical royalism was perfectly heartless. Perhaps he reflected on his motives; but it seemed to me that his
conscience could be nothing else but a monstrous thing which very few actions could disturb appreciably. Yet for the
credit of Dona Rita I did not withhold from him my young sagacity. What he thought of it I don’t know, The matters we
discussed were not of course of high policy, though from the point of view of the war in the south they were important
enough. We agreed on certain things to be done, and finally, always out of regard for Dona Rita’s credit, I put myself
generally at his disposition or of any Carlist agent he would appoint in his place; for I did not suppose that he would
remain very long in Marseilles. He got out of the chair laboriously, like a sick child might have done. The audience
was over but he noticed my eyes wandering to the portrait and he said in his measured, breathed-out tones:

“I owe the pleasure of having this admirable work here to the gracious attention of Madame de Lastaola, who, knowing
my attachment to the royal person of my Master, has sent it down from Paris to greet me in this house which has been
given up for my occupation also through her generosity to the Royal Cause. Unfortunately she, too, is touched by the
infection of this irreverent and unfaithful age. But she is young yet. She is young.”

These last words were pronounced in a strange tone of menace as though he were supernaturally aware of some
suspended disasters. With his burning eyes he was the image of an Inquisitor with an unconquerable soul in that frail
body. But suddenly he dropped his eyelids and the conversation finished as characteristically as it had begun: with a
slow, dismissing inclination of the head and an “Adios, Senor — may God guard you from sin.”

Chapter 3

I must say that for the next three months I threw myself into my unlawful trade with a sort of
desperation, dogged and hopeless, like a fairly decent fellow who takes deliberately to drink. The business was getting
dangerous. The bands in the South were not very well organized, worked with no very definite plan, and now were
beginning to be pretty closely hunted. The arrangements for the transport of supplies were going to pieces; our friends
ashore were getting scared; and it was no joke to find after a day of skilful dodging that there was no one at the
landing place and have to go out again with our compromising cargo, to slink and lurk about the coast for another week
or so, unable to trust anybody and looking at every vessel we met with suspicion. Once we were ambushed by a lot of
“rascally Carabineers,” as Dominic called them, who hid themselves among the rocks after disposing a train of mules
well in view on the seashore. Luckily, on evidence which I could never understand, Dominic detected something
suspicious. Perhaps it was by virtue of some sixth sense that men born for unlawful occupations may be gifted with.
“There is a smell of treachery about this,” he remarked suddenly, turning at his oar. (He and I were pulling alone in a
little boat to reconnoitre.) I couldn’t detect any smell and I regard to this day our escape on that occasion as,
properly speaking, miraculous. Surely some supernatural power must have struck upwards the barrels of the Carabineers’
rifles, for they missed us by yards. And as the Carabineers have the reputation of shooting straight, Dominic, after
swearing most horribly, ascribed our escape to the particular guardian angel that looks after crazy young gentlemen.
Dominic believed in angels in a conventional way, but laid no claim to having one of his own. Soon afterwards, while
sailing quietly at night, we found ourselves suddenly near a small coasting vessel, also without lights, which all at
once treated us to a volley of rifle fire. Dominic’s mighty and inspired yell: “A plat ventre!” and also an unexpected
roll to windward saved all our lives. Nobody got a scratch. We were past in a moment and in a breeze then blowing we
had the heels of anything likely to give us chase. But an hour afterwards, as we stood side by side peering into the
darkness, Dominic was heard to mutter through his teeth: “Le metier se gate.” I, too, had the feeling that the trade,
if not altogether spoiled, had seen its best days. But I did not care. In fact, for my purpose it was rather better, a
more potent influence; like the stronger intoxication of raw spirit. A volley in the dark after all was not such a bad
thing. Only a moment before we had received it, there, in that calm night of the sea full of freshness and soft
whispers, I had been looking at an enchanting turn of a head in a faint light of its own, the tawny hair with snared
red sparks brushed up from the nape of a white neck and held up on high by an arrow of gold feathered with brilliants
and with ruby gleams all along its shaft. That jewelled ornament, which I remember often telling Rita was of a very
Philistinish conception (it was in some way connected with a tortoiseshell comb) occupied an undue place in my memory,
tried to come into some sort of significance even in my sleep. Often I dreamed of her with white limbs shimmering in
the gloom like a nymph haunting a riot of foliage, and raising a perfect round arm to take an arrow of gold out of her
hair to throw it at me by hand, like a dart. It came on, a whizzing trail of light, but I always woke up before it
struck. Always. Invariably. It never had a chance. A volley of small arms was much more likely to do the business some
day — or night.

At last came the day when everything slipped out of my grasp. The little vessel, broken and gone like the only toy
of a lonely child, the sea itself, which had swallowed it, throwing me on shore after a shipwreck that instead of a
fair fight left in me the memory of a suicide. It took away all that there was in me of independent life, but just
failed to take me out of the world, which looked then indeed like Another World fit for no one else but unrepentant
sinners. Even Dominic failed me, his moral entity destroyed by what to him was a most tragic ending of our common
enterprise. The lurid swiftness of it all was like a stunning thunder-clap — and, one evening, I found myself weary,
heartsore, my brain still dazed and with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the railway station, after many
adventures, one more disagreeable than another, involving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties with all
sorts of people who looked upon me evidently more as a discreditable vagabond deserving the attentions of gendarmes
than a respectable (if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel of his own. I must confess that I slunk out
of the railway station shunning its many lights as if, invariably, failure made an outcast of a man. I hadn’t any money
in my pocket. I hadn’t even the bundle and the stick of a destitute wayfarer. I was unshaven and unwashed, and my heart
was faint within me. My attire was such that I daren’t approach the rank of fiacres, where indeed I could perceive only
two pairs of lamps, of which one suddenly drove away while I looked. The other I gave up to the fortunate of this
earth. I didn’t believe in my power of persuasion. I had no powers. I slunk on and on, shivering with cold, through the
uproarious streets. Bedlam was loose in them. It was the time of Carnival.

Small objects of no value have the secret of sticking to a man in an astonishing way. I had nearly lost my liberty
and even my life, I had lost my ship, a money-belt full of gold, I had lost my companions, had parted from my friend;
my occupation, my only link with life, my touch with the sea, my cap and jacket were gone — but a small penknife and a
latchkey had never parted company with me. With the latchkey I opened the door of refuge. The hall wore its
deaf-and-dumb air, its black-and-white stillness.

The sickly gas-jet still struggled bravely with adversity at the end of the raised silver arm of the statuette which
had kept to a hair’s breadth its graceful pose on the toes of its left foot; and the staircase lost itself in the
shadows above. Therese was parsimonious with the lights. To see all this was surprising. It seemed to me that all the
things I had known ought to have come down with a crash at the moment of the final catastrophe on the Spanish coast.
And there was Therese herself descending the stairs, frightened but plucky. Perhaps she thought that she would be
murdered this time for certain. She had a strange, unemotional conviction that the house was particularly convenient
for a crime. One could never get to the bottom of her wild notions which she held with the stolidity of a peasant
allied to the outward serenity of a nun. She quaked all over as she came down to her doom, but when she recognized me
she got such a shock that she sat down suddenly on the lowest step. She did not expect me for another week at least,
and, besides, she explained, the state I was in made her blood take “one turn.”

Indeed my plight seemed either to have called out or else repressed her true nature. But who had ever fathomed her
nature! There was none of her treacly volubility. There were none of her “dear young gentlemans” and “poor little
hearts” and references to sin. In breathless silence she ran about the house getting my room ready, lighting fires and
gas-jets and even hauling at me to help me up the stairs. Yes, she did lay hands on me for that charitable purpose.
They trembled. Her pale eyes hardly left my face. “What brought you here like this?” she whispered once.

“If I were to tell you, Mademoiselle Therese, you would see there the hand of God.”

She dropped the extra pillow she was carrying and then nearly fell over it. “Oh, dear heart,” she murmured, and ran
off to the kitchen.

I sank into bed as into a cloud and Therese reappeared very misty and offering me something in a cup. I believe it
was hot milk, and after I drank it she took the cup and stood looking at me fixedly. I managed to say with difficulty:
“Go away,” whereupon she vanished as if by magic before the words were fairly out of my mouth. Immediately afterwards
the sunlight forced through the slats of the jalousies its diffused glow, and Therese was there again as if by magic,
saying in a distant voice: “It’s midday” . . . Youth will have its rights. I had slept like a stone for
seventeen hours.

I suppose an honourable bankrupt would know such an awakening: the sense of catastrophe, the shrinking from the
necessity of beginning life again, the faint feeling that there are misfortunes which must be paid for by a hanging. In
the course of the morning Therese informed me that the apartment usually occupied by Mr. Blunt was vacant and added
mysteriously that she intended to keep it vacant for a time, because she had been instructed to do so. I couldn’t
imagine why Blunt should wish to return to Marseilles. She told me also that the house was empty except for myself and
the two dancing girls with their father. Those people had been away for some time as the girls had engagements in some
Italian summer theatres, but apparently they had secured a re-engagement for the winter and were now back. I let
Therese talk because it kept my imagination from going to work on subjects which, I had made up my mind, were no
concern of mine. But I went out early to perform an unpleasant task. It was only proper that I should let the Carlist
agent ensconced in the Prado Villa know of the sudden ending of my activities. It would be grave enough news for him,
and I did not like to be its bearer for reasons which were mainly personal. I resembled Dominic in so far that I, too,
disliked failure.

The Marquis of Villarel had of course gone long before. The man who was there was another type of Carlist
altogether, and his temperament was that of a trader. He was the chief purveyor of the Legitimist armies, an honest
broker of stores, and enjoyed a great reputation for cleverness. His important task kept him, of course, in France, but
his young wife, whose beauty and devotion to her King were well known, represented him worthily at Headquarters, where
his own appearances were extremely rare. The dissimilar but united loyalties of those two people had been rewarded by
the title of baron and the ribbon of some order or other. The gossip of the Legitimist circles appreciated those
favours with smiling indulgence. He was the man who had been so distressed and frightened by Dona Rita’s first visit to
Tolosa. He had an extreme regard for his wife. And in that sphere of clashing arms and unceasing intrigue nobody would
have smiled then at his agitation if the man himself hadn’t been somewhat grotesque.

He must have been startled when I sent in my name, for he didn’t of course expect to see me yet — nobody expected
me. He advanced soft-footed down the room. With his jutting nose, flat-topped skull and sable garments he recalled an
obese raven, and when he heard of the disaster he manifested his astonishment and concern in a most plebeian manner by
a low and expressive whistle. I, of course, could not share his consternation. My feelings in that connection were of a
different order; but I was annoyed at his unintelligent stare.

“I suppose,” I said, “you will take it on yourself to advise Dona Rita, who is greatly interested in this
affair.”

“Yes, but I was given to understand that Madame de Lastaola was to leave Paris either yesterday or this
morning.”

It was my turn to stare dumbly before I could manage to ask: “For Tolosa?” in a very knowing tone.

Whether it was the droop of his head, play of light, or some other subtle cause, his nose seemed to have grown
perceptibly longer.

“That, Senor, is the place where the news has got to be conveyed without undue delay,” he said in an agitated
wheeze. “I could, of course, telegraph to our agent in Bayonne who would find a messenger. But I don’t like, I don’t
like! The Alphonsists have agents, too, who hang about the telegraph offices. It’s no use letting the enemy get that
news.”

He was obviously very confused, unhappy, and trying to think of two different things at once.

“Sit down, Don George, sit down.” He absolutely forced a cigar on me. “I am extremely distressed. That — I mean Dona
Rita is undoubtedly on her way to Tolosa. This is very frightful.”

I must say, however, that there was in the man some sense of duty. He mastered his private fears. After some
cogitation he murmured: “There is another way of getting the news to Headquarters. Suppose you write me a formal letter
just stating the facts, the unfortunate facts, which I will be able to forward. There is an agent of ours, a fellow I
have been employing for purchasing supplies, a perfectly honest man. He is coming here from the north by the ten
o’clock train with some papers for me of a confidential nature. I was rather embarrassed about it. It wouldn’t do for
him to get into any sort of trouble. He is not very intelligent. I wonder, Don George, whether you would consent to
meet him at the station and take care of him generally till to-morrow. I don’t like the idea of him going about alone.
Then, to-morrow night, we would send him on to Tolosa by the west coast route, with the news; and then he can also call
on Dona Rita who will no doubt be already there . . . .” He became again distracted all in a moment and
actually went so far as to wring his fat hands. “Oh, yes, she will be there!” he exclaimed in most pathetic
accents.

I was not in the humour to smile at anything, and he must have been satisfied with the gravity with which I beheld
his extraordinary antics. My mind was very far away. I thought: Why not? Why shouldn’t I also write a letter to Dona
Rita, telling her that now nothing stood in the way of my leaving Europe, because, really, the enterprise couldn’t be
begun again; that things that come to an end can never be begun again. The idea — never again — had complete possession
of my mind. I could think of nothing else. Yes, I would write. The worthy Commissary General of the Carlist forces was
under the impression that I was looking at him; but what I had in my eye was a jumble of butterfly women and winged
youths and the soft sheen of Argand lamps gleaming on an arrow of gold in the hair of a head that seemed to evade my
outstretched hand.

“Oh, yes,” I said, “I have nothing to do and even nothing to think of just now, I will meet your man as he gets off
the train at ten o’clock to-night. What’s he like?”

“Oh, he has a black moustache and whiskers, and his chin is shaved,” said the newly-fledged baron cordially. “A very
honest fellow. I always found him very useful. His name is Jose Ortega.”

He was perfectly self-possessed now, and walking soft-footed accompanied me to the door of the room. He shook hands
with a melancholy smile. “This is a very frightful situation. My poor wife will be quite distracted. She is such a
patriot. Many thanks, Don George. You relieve me greatly. The fellow is rather stupid and rather bad-tempered. Queer
creature, but very honest! Oh, very honest!”

Chapter 4

It was the last evening of Carnival. The same masks, the same yells, the same mad rushes, the same
bedlam of disguised humanity blowing about the streets in the great gusts of mistral that seemed to make them dance
like dead leaves on an earth where all joy is watched by death.

It was exactly twelve months since that other carnival evening when I had felt a little weary and a little lonely
but at peace with all mankind. It must have been — to a day or two. But on this evening it wasn’t merely loneliness
that I felt. I felt bereaved with a sense of a complete and universal loss in which there was perhaps more resentment
than mourning; as if the world had not been taken away from me by an august decree but filched from my innocence by an
underhand fate at the very moment when it had disclosed to my passion its warm and generous beauty. This consciousness
of universal loss had this advantage that it induced something resembling a state of philosophic indifference. I walked
up to the railway station caring as little for the cold blasts of wind as though I had been going to the scaffold. The
delay of the train did not irritate me in the least. I had finally made up my mind to write a letter to Dona Rita; and
this “honest fellow” for whom I was waiting would take it to her. He would have no difficulty in Tolosa in finding
Madame de Lastaola. The General Headquarters, which was also a Court, would be buzzing with comments on her presence.
Most likely that “honest fellow” was already known to Dona Rita. For all I knew he might have been her discovery just
as I was. Probably I, too, was regarded as an “honest fellow” enough; but stupid — since it was clear that my luck was
not inexhaustible. I hoped that while carrying my letter the man would not let himself be caught by some Alphonsist
guerilla who would, of course, shoot him. But why should he? I, for instance, had escaped with my life from a much more
dangerous enterprise than merely passing through the frontier line in charge of some trustworthy guide. I pictured the
fellow to myself trudging over the stony slopes and scrambling down wild ravines with my letter to Dona Rita in his
pocket. It would be such a letter of farewell as no lover had ever written, no woman in the world had ever read, since
the beginning of love on earth. It would be worthy of the woman. No experience, no memories, no dead traditions of
passion or language would inspire it. She herself would be its sole inspiration. She would see her own image in it as
in a mirror; and perhaps then she would understand what it was I was saying farewell to on the very threshold of my
life. A breath of vanity passed through my brain. A letter as moving as her mere existence was moving would be
something unique. I regretted I was not a poet.

I woke up to a great noise of feet, a sudden influx of people through the doors of the platform. I made out my man’s
whiskers at once — not that they were enormous, but because I had been warned beforehand of their existence by the
excellent Commissary General. At first I saw nothing of him but his whiskers: they were black and cut somewhat in the
shape of a shark’s fin and so very fine that the least breath of air animated them into a sort of playful restlessness.
The man’s shoulders were hunched up and when he had made his way clear of the throng of passengers I perceived him as
an unhappy and shivery being. Obviously he didn’t expect to be met, because when I murmured an enquiring, “Senor
Ortega?” into his ear he swerved away from me and nearly dropped a little handbag he was carrying. His complexion was
uniformly pale, his mouth was red, but not engaging. His social status was not very definite. He was wearing a dark
blue overcoat of no particular cut, his aspect had no relief; yet those restless side-whiskers flanking his red mouth
and the suspicious expression of his black eyes made him noticeable. This I regretted the more because I caught sight
of two skulking fellows, looking very much like policemen in plain clothes, watching us from a corner of the great
hall. I hurried my man into a fiacre. He had been travelling from early morning on cross-country lines and after we got
on terms a little confessed to being very hungry and cold. His red lips trembled and I noted an underhand, cynical
curiosity when he had occasion to raise his eyes to my face. I was in some doubt how to dispose of him but as we rolled
on at a jog trot I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to organize for him a shake-down in the
studio. Obscure lodging houses are precisely the places most looked after by the police, and even the best hotels are
bound to keep a register of arrivals. I was very anxious that nothing should stop his projected mission of courier to
headquarters. As we passed various street corners where the mistral blast struck at us fiercely I could feel him
shivering by my side. However, Therese would have lighted the iron stove in the studio before retiring for the night,
and, anyway, I would have to turn her out to make up a bed on the couch. Service of the King! I must say that she was
amiable and didn’t seem to mind anything one asked her to do. Thus while the fellow slumbered on the divan I would sit
upstairs in my room setting down on paper those great words of passion and sorrow that seethed in my brain and even
must have forced themselves in murmurs on to my lips, because the man by my side suddenly asked me: “What did you say?”
— “Nothing,” I answered, very much surprised. In the shifting light of the street lamps he looked the picture of bodily
misery with his chattering teeth and his whiskers blown back flat over his ears. But somehow he didn’t arouse my
compassion. He was swearing to himself, in French and Spanish, and I tried to soothe him by the assurance that we had
not much farther to go. “I am starving,” he remarked acidly, and I felt a little compunction. Clearly, the first thing
to do was to feed him. We were then entering the Cannebiere and as I didn’t care to show myself with him in the
fashionable restaurant where a new face (and such a face, too) would be remarked, I pulled up the fiacre at the door of
the Maison Doree. That was more of a place of general resort where, in the multitude of casual patrons, he would pass
unnoticed.

For this last night of carnival the big house had decorated all its balconies with rows of coloured paper lanterns
right up to the roof. I led the way to the grand salon, for as to private rooms they had been all retained days before.
There was a great crowd of people in costume, but by a piece of good luck we managed to secure a little table in a
corner. The revellers, intent on their pleasure, paid no attention to us. Senor Ortega trod on my heels and after
sitting down opposite me threw an ill-natured glance at the festive scene. It might have been about half-past ten,
then.

Two glasses of wine he drank one after another did not improve his temper. He only ceased to shiver. After he had
eaten something it must have occurred to him that he had no reason to bear me a grudge and he tried to assume a civil
and even friendly manner. His mouth, however, betrayed an abiding bitterness. I mean when he smiled. In repose it was a
very expressionless mouth, only it was too red to be altogether ordinary. The whole of him was like that: the whiskers
too black, the hair too shiny, the forehead too white, the eyes too mobile; and he lent you his attention with an air
of eagerness which made you uncomfortable. He seemed to expect you to give yourself away by some unconsidered word that
he would snap up with delight. It was that peculiarity that somehow put me on my guard. I had no idea who I was facing
across the table and as a matter of fact I did not care. All my impressions were blurred; and even the promptings of my
instinct were the haziest thing imaginable. Now and then I had acute hallucinations of a woman with an arrow of gold in
her hair. This caused alternate moments of exaltation and depression from which I tried to take refuge in conversation;
but Senor Ortega was not stimulating. He was preoccupied with personal matters. When suddenly he asked me whether I
knew why he had been called away from his work (he had been buying supplies from peasants somewhere in Central France),
I answered that I didn’t know what the reason was originally, but I had an idea that the present intention was to make
of him a courier, bearing certain messages from Baron H. to the Quartel Real in Tolosa.

He glared at me like a basilisk. “And why have I been met like this?” he enquired with an air of being prepared to
hear a lie.

I explained that it was the Baron’s wish, as a matter of prudence and to avoid any possible trouble which might
arise from enquiries by the police.

He took it badly. “What nonsense.” He was — he said — an employe (for several years) of Hernandez Brothers in Paris,
an importing firm, and he was travelling on their business — as he could prove. He dived into his side pocket and
produced a handful of folded papers of all sorts which he plunged back again instantly.

And even then I didn’t know whom I had there, opposite me, busy now devouring a slice of pate de foie gras. Not in
the least. It never entered my head. How could it? The Rita that haunted me had no history; she was but the principle
of life charged with fatality. Her form was only a mirage of desire decoying one step by step into despair.

Senor Ortega gulped down some more wine and suggested I should tell him who I was. “It’s only right I should know,”
he added.

This could not be gainsaid; and to a man connected with the Carlist organization the shortest way was to introduce
myself as that “Monsieur George” of whom he had probably heard.

He leaned far over the table, till his very breast-bone was over the edge, as though his eyes had been stilettos and
he wanted to drive them home into my brain. It was only much later that I understood how near death I had been at that
moment. But the knives on the tablecloth were the usual restaurant knives with rounded ends and about as deadly as
pieces of hoop-iron. Perhaps in the very gust of his fury he remembered what a French restaurant knife is like and
something sane within him made him give up the sudden project of cutting my heart out where I sat. For it could have
been nothing but a sudden impulse. His settled purpose was quite other. It was not my heart that he was after. His
fingers indeed were groping amongst the knife handles by the side of his plate but what captivated my attention for a
moment were his red lips which were formed into an odd, sly, insinuating smile. Heard! To be sure he had heard! The
chief of the great arms smuggling organization!

“Oh!” I said, “that’s giving me too much importance.” The person responsible and whom I looked upon as chief of all
the business was, as he might have heard, too, a certain noble and loyal lady.

“I am as noble as she is,” he snapped peevishly, and I put him down at once as a very offensive beast. “And as to
being loyal, what is that? It is being truthful! It is being faithful! I know all about her.”

I managed to preserve an air of perfect unconcern. He wasn’t a fellow to whom one could talk of Dona Rita.

“You are a Basque,” I said.

He admitted rather contemptuously that he was a Basque and even then the truth did not dawn upon me. I suppose that
with the hidden egoism of a lover I was thinking of myself, of myself alone in relation to Dona Rita, not of Dona Rita
herself. He, too, obviously. He said: “I am an educated man, but I know her people, all peasants. There is a sister, an
uncle, a priest, a peasant, too, and perfectly unenlightened. One can’t expect much from a priest (I am a free-thinker
of course), but he is really too bad, more like a brute beast. As to all her people, mostly dead now, they never were
of any account. There was a little land, but they were always working on other people’s farms, a barefooted gang, a
starved lot. I ought to know because we are distant relations. Twentieth cousins or something of the sort. Yes, I am
related to that most loyal lady. And what is she, after all, but a Parisian woman with innumerable lovers, as I have
been told.”

“I don’t think your information is very correct,” I said, affecting to yawn slightly. “This is mere gossip of the
gutter and I am surprised at you, who really know nothing about it — ”

But the disgusting animal had fallen into a brown study. The hair of his very whiskers was perfectly still. I had
now given up all idea of the letter to Rita. Suddenly he spoke again:

“Women are the origin of all evil. One should never trust them. They have no honour. No honour!” he repeated,
striking his breast with his closed fist on which the knuckles stood out very white. “I left my village many years ago
and of course I am perfectly satisfied with my position and I don’t know why I should trouble my head about this loyal
lady. I suppose that’s the way women get on in the world.”

I felt convinced that he was no proper person to be a messenger to headquarters. He struck me as altogether
untrustworthy and perhaps not quite sane. This was confirmed by him saying suddenly with no visible connection and as
if it had been forced from him by some agonizing process: “I was a boy once,” and then stopping dead short with a
smile. He had a smile that frightened one by its association of malice and anguish.

“Will you have anything more to eat?” I asked.

He declined dully. He had had enough. But he drained the last of a bottle into his glass and accepted a cigar which
I offered him. While he was lighting it I had a sort of confused impression that he wasn’t such a stranger to me as I
had assumed he was; and yet, on the other hand, I was perfectly certain I had never seen him before. Next moment I felt
that I could have knocked him down if he hadn’t looked so amazingly unhappy, while he came out with the astounding
question: “Senor, have you ever been a lover in your young days?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “How old do you think I am?”

“That’s true,” he said, gazing at me in a way in which the damned gaze out of their cauldrons of boiling pitch at
some soul walking scot free in the place of torment. “It’s true, you don’t seem to have anything on your mind.” He
assumed an air of ease, throwing an arm over the back of his chair and blowing the smoke through the gash of his
twisted red mouth. “Tell me,” he said, “between men, you know, has this — wonderful celebrity — what does she call
herself? How long has she been your mistress?”

I reflected rapidly that if I knocked him over, chair and all, by a sudden blow from the shoulder it would bring
about infinite complications beginning with a visit to the Commissaire de Police on night-duty, and ending in God knows
what scandal and disclosures of political kind; because there was no telling what, or how much, this outrageous brute
might choose to say and how many people he might not involve in a most undesirable publicity. He was smoking his cigar
with a poignantly mocking air and not even looking at me. One can’t hit like that a man who isn’t even looking at one;
and then, just as I was looking at him swinging his leg with a caustic smile and stony eyes, I felt sorry for the
creature. It was only his body that was there in that chair. It was manifest to me that his soul was absent in some
hell of its own. At that moment I attained the knowledge of who it was I had before me. This was the man of whom both
Dona Rita and Rose were so much afraid. It remained then for me to look after him for the night and then arrange with
Baron H. that he should be sent away the very next day — and anywhere but to Tolosa. Yes, evidently, I mustn’t lose
sight of him. I proposed in the calmest tone that we should go on where he could get his much-needed rest. He rose with
alacrity, picked up his little hand-bag, and, walking out before me, no doubt looked a very ordinary person to all eyes
but mine. It was then past eleven, not much, because we had not been in that restaurant quite an hour, but the routine
of the town’s night-life being upset during the Carnival the usual row of fiacres outside the Maison Doree was not
there; in fact, there were very few carriages about. Perhaps the coachmen had assumed Pierrot costumes and were rushing
about the streets on foot yelling with the rest of the population. “We will have to walk,” I said after a while. — “Oh,
yes, let us walk,” assented Senor Ortega, “or I will be frozen here.” It was like a plaint of unutterable wretchedness.
I had a fancy that all his natural heat had abandoned his limbs and gone to his brain. It was otherwise with me; my
head was cool but I didn’t find the night really so very cold. We stepped out briskly side by side. My lucid thinking
was, as it were, enveloped by the wide shouting of the consecrated Carnival gaiety. I have heard many noises since, but
nothing that gave me such an intimate impression of the savage instincts hidden in the breast of mankind; these yells
of festivity suggested agonizing fear, rage of murder, ferocity of lust, and the irremediable joylessness of human
condition: yet they were emitted by people who were convinced that they were amusing themselves supremely,
traditionally, with the sanction of ages, with the approval of their conscience — and no mistake about it whatever! Our
appearance, the soberness of our gait made us conspicuous. Once or twice, by common inspiration, masks rushed forward
and forming a circle danced round us uttering discordant shouts of derision; for we were an outrage to the peculiar
proprieties of the hour, and besides we were obviously lonely and defenceless. On those occasions there was nothing for
it but to stand still till the flurry was over. My companion, however, would stamp his feet with rage, and I must admit
that I myself regretted not having provided for our wearing a couple of false noses, which would have been enough to
placate the just resentment of those people. We might have also joined in the dance, but for some reason or other it
didn’t occur to us; and I heard once a high, clear woman’s voice stigmatizing us for a “species of swelled heads”
(espece d’enfles). We proceeded sedately, my companion muttered with rage, and I was able to resume my thinking. It was
based on the deep persuasion that the man at my side was insane with quite another than Carnivalesque lunacy which
comes on at one stated time of the year. He was fundamentally mad, though not perhaps completely; which of course made
him all the greater, I won’t say danger but, nuisance.

I remember once a young doctor expounding the theory that most catastrophes in family circles, surprising episodes
in public affairs and disasters in private life, had their origin in the fact that the world was full of half-mad
people. He asserted that they were the real majority. When asked whether he considered himself as belonging to the
majority, he said frankly that he didn’t think so; unless the folly of voicing this view in a company, so utterly
unable to appreciate all its horror, could be regarded as the first symptom of his own fate. We shouted down him and
his theory, but there is no doubt that it had thrown a chill on the gaiety of our gathering.

We had now entered a quieter quarter of the town and Senor Ortega had ceased his muttering. For myself I had not the
slightest doubt of my own sanity. It was proved to me by the way I could apply my intelligence to the problem of what
was to be done with Senor Ortega. Generally, he was unfit to be trusted with any mission whatever. The unstability of
his temper was sure to get him into a scrape. Of course carrying a letter to Headquarters was not a very complicated
matter; and as to that I would have trusted willingly a properly trained dog. My private letter to Dona Rita, the
wonderful, the unique letter of farewell, I had given up for the present. Naturally I thought of the Ortega problem
mainly in the terms of Dona Rita’s safety. Her image presided at every council, at every conflict of my mind, and
dominated every faculty of my senses. It floated before my eyes, it touched my elbow, it guarded my right side and my
left side; my ears seemed to catch the sound of her footsteps behind me, she enveloped me with passing whiffs of warmth
and perfume, with filmy touches of the hair on my face. She penetrated me, my head was full of her . . . And
his head, too, I thought suddenly with a side glance at my companion. He walked quietly with hunched-up shoulders
carrying his little hand-bag and he looked the most commonplace figure imaginable.

Yes. There was between us a most horrible fellowship; the association of his crazy torture with the sublime
suffering of my passion. We hadn’t been a quarter of an hour together when that woman had surged up fatally between us;
between this miserable wretch and myself. We were haunted by the same image. But I was sane! I was sane! Not because I
was certain that the fellow must not be allowed to go to Tolosa, but because I was perfectly alive to the difficulty of
stopping him from going there, since the decision was absolutely in the hands of Baron H.

If I were to go early in the morning and tell that fat, bilious man: “Look here, your Ortega’s mad,” he would
certainly think at once that I was, get very frightened, and . . . one couldn’t tell what course he would
take. He would eliminate me somehow out of the affair. And yet I could not let the fellow proceed to where Dona Rita
was, because, obviously, he had been molesting her, had filled her with uneasiness and even alarm, was an unhappy
element and a disturbing influence in her life — incredible as the thing appeared! I couldn’t let him go on to make
himself a worry and a nuisance, drive her out from a town in which she wished to be (for whatever reason) and perhaps
start some explosive scandal. And that girl Rose seemed to fear something graver even than a scandal. But if I were to
explain the matter fully to H. he would simply rejoice in his heart. Nothing would please him more than to have Dona
Rita driven out of Tolosa. What a relief from his anxieties (and his wife’s, too); and if I were to go further, if I
even went so far as to hint at the fears which Rose had not been able to conceal from me, why then — I went on thinking
coldly with a stoical rejection of the most elementary faith in mankind’s rectitude — why then, that accommodating
husband would simply let the ominous messenger have his chance. He would see there only his natural anxieties being
laid to rest for ever. Horrible? Yes. But I could not take the risk. In a twelvemonth I had travelled a long way in my
mistrust of mankind.

We paced on steadily. I thought: “How on earth am I going to stop you?” Had this arisen only a month before, when I
had the means at hand and Dominic to confide in, I would have simply kidnapped the fellow. A little trip to sea would
not have done Senor Ortega any harm; though no doubt it would have been abhorrent to his feelings. But now I had not
the means. I couldn’t even tell where my poor Dominic was hiding his diminished head.

Again I glanced at him sideways. I was the taller of the two and as it happened I met in the light of the street
lamp his own stealthy glance directed up at me with an agonized expression, an expression that made me fancy I could
see the man’s very soul writhing in his body like an impaled worm. In spite of my utter inexperience I had some notion
of the images that rushed into his mind at the sight of any man who had approached Dona Rita. It was enough to awaken
in any human being a movement of horrified compassion; but my pity went out not to him but to Dona Rita. It was for her
that I felt sorry; I pitied her for having that damned soul on her track. I pitied her with tenderness and indignation,
as if this had been both a danger and a dishonour.

I don’t mean to say that those thoughts passed through my head consciously. I had only the resultant, settled
feeling. I had, however, a thought, too. It came on me suddenly, and I asked myself with rage and astonishment: “Must I
then kill that brute?” There didn’t seem to be any alternative. Between him and Dona Rita I couldn’t hesitate. I
believe I gave a slight laugh of desperation. The suddenness of this sinister conclusion had in it something comic and
unbelievable. It loosened my grip on my mental processes. A Latin tag came into my head about the facile descent into
the abyss. I marvelled at its aptness, and also that it should have come to me so pat. But I believe now that it was
suggested simply by the actual declivity of the street of the Consuls which lies on a gentle slope. We had just turned
the corner. All the houses were dark and in a perspective of complete solitude our two shadows dodged and wheeled about
our feet.

“Here we are,” I said.

He was an extraordinarily chilly devil. When we stopped I could hear his teeth chattering again. I don’t know what
came over me, I had a sort of nervous fit, was incapable of finding my pockets, let alone the latchkey. I had the
illusion of a narrow streak of light on the wall of the house as if it had been cracked. “I hope we will be able to get
in,” I murmured.

Senor Ortega stood waiting patiently with his handbag, like a rescued wayfarer. “But you live in this house, don’t
you?” he observed.

“No,” I said, without hesitation. I didn’t know how that man would behave if he were aware that I was staying under
the same roof. He was half mad. He might want to talk all night, try crazily to invade my privacy. How could I tell?
Moreover, I wasn’t so sure that I would remain in the house. I had some notion of going out again and walking up and
down the street of the Consuls till daylight. “No, an absent friend lets me use . . . I had that latchkey
this morning . . . Ah! here it is.”

I let him go in first. The sickly gas flame was there on duty, undaunted, waiting for the end of the world to come
and put it out. I think that the black-and-white hall surprised Ortega. I had closed the front door without noise and
stood for a moment listening, while he glanced about furtively. There were only two other doors in the hall, right and
left. Their panels of ebony were decorated with bronze applications in the centre. The one on the left was of course
Blunt’s door. As the passage leading beyond it was dark at the further end I took Senor Ortega by the hand and led him
along, unresisting, like a child. For some reason or other I moved on tip-toe and he followed my example. The light and
the warmth of the studio impressed him favourably; he laid down his little bag, rubbed his hands together, and produced
a smile of satisfaction; but it was such a smile as a totally ruined man would perhaps force on his lips, or a man
condemned to a short shrift by his doctor. I begged him to make himself at home and said that I would go at once and
hunt up the woman of the house who would make him up a bed on the big couch there. He hardly listened to what I said.
What were all those things to him! He knew that his destiny was to sleep on a bed of thorns, to feed on adders. But he
tried to show a sort of polite interest. He asked: “What is this place?”

“It used to belong to a painter,” I mumbled.

“Ah, your absent friend,” he said, making a wry mouth. “I detest all those artists, and all those writers, and all
politicos who are thieves; and I would go even farther and higher, laying a curse on all idle lovers of women. You
think perhaps I am a Royalist? No. If there was anybody in heaven or hell to pray to I would pray for a revolution — a
red revolution everywhere.”

“You astonish me,” I said, just to say something.

“No! But there are half a dozen people in the world with whom I would like to settle accounts. One could shoot them
like partridges and no questions asked. That’s what revolution would mean to me.”

“It’s a beautifully simple view,” I said. “I imagine you are not the only one who holds it; but I really must look
after your comforts. You mustn’t forget that we have to see Baron H. early to-morrow morning.” And I went out quietly
into the passage wondering in what part of the house Therese had elected to sleep that night. But, lo and behold, when
I got to the foot of the stairs there was Therese coming down from the upper regions in her nightgown, like a
sleep-walker. However, it wasn’t that, because, before I could exclaim, she vanished off the first floor landing like a
streak of white mist and without the slightest sound. Her attire made it perfectly clear that she could not have heard
us coming in. In fact, she must have been certain that the house was empty, because she was as well aware as myself
that the Italian girls after their work at the opera were going to a masked ball to dance for their own amusement,
attended of course by their conscientious father. But what thought, need, or sudden impulse had driven Therese out of
bed like this was something I couldn’t conceive.

I didn’t call out after her. I felt sure that she would return. I went up slowly to the first floor and met her
coming down again, this time carrying a lighted candle. She had managed to make herself presentable in an
extraordinarily short time.

“Oh, my dear young Monsieur, you have given me a fright.”

“Yes. And I nearly fainted, too,” I said. “You looked perfectly awful. What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?”

She had lighted by then the gas on the landing and I must say that I had never seen exactly that manner of face on
her before. She wriggled, confused and shifty-eyed, before me; but I ascribed this behaviour to her shocked modesty and
without troubling myself any more about her feelings I informed her that there was a Carlist downstairs who must be put
up for the night. Most unexpectedly she betrayed a ridiculous consternation, but only for a moment. Then she assumed at
once that I would give him hospitality upstairs where there was a camp-bedstead in my dressing-room. I said:

“No. Give him a shake-down in the studio, where he is now. It’s warm in there. And remember! I charge you strictly
not to let him know that I sleep in this house. In fact, I don’t know myself that I will; I have certain matters to
attend to this very night. You will also have to serve him his coffee in the morning. I will take him away before ten
o’clock.”

All this seemed to impress her more than I had expected. As usual when she felt curious, or in some other way
excited, she assumed a saintly, detached expression, and asked:

“The dear gentleman is your friend, I suppose?”

“I only know he is a Spaniard and a Carlist,” I said: “and that ought to be enough for you.”

Instead of the usual effusive exclamations she murmured: “Dear me, dear me,” and departed upstairs with the candle
to get together a few blankets and pillows, I suppose. As for me I walked quietly downstairs on my way to the studio. I
had a curious sensation that I was acting in a preordained manner, that life was not at all what I had thought it to
be, or else that I had been altogether changed sometime during the day, and that I was a different person from the man
whom I remembered getting out of my bed in the morning.

Also feelings had altered all their values. The words, too, had become strange. It was only the inanimate
surroundings that remained what they had always been. For instance the studio . . . .

During my absence Senor Ortega had taken off his coat and I found him as it were in the air, sitting in his shirt
sleeves on a chair which he had taken pains to place in the very middle of the floor. I repressed an absurd impulse to
walk round him as though he had been some sort of exhibit. His hands were spread over his knees and he looked perfectly
insensible. I don’t mean strange, or ghastly, or wooden, but just insensible — like an exhibit. And that effect
persisted even after he raised his black suspicious eyes to my face. He lowered them almost at once. It was very
mechanical. I gave him up and became rather concerned about myself. My thought was that I had better get out of that
before any more queer notions came into my head. So I only remained long enough to tell him that the woman of the house
was bringing down some bedding and that I hoped that he would have a good night’s rest. And directly I spoke it struck
me that this was the most extraordinary speech that ever was addressed to a figure of that sort. He, however, did not
seem startled by it or moved in any way. He simply said:

“Thank you.”

In the darkest part of the long passage outside I met Therese with her arms full of pillows and blankets.

Chapter 5

Coming out of the bright light of the studio I didn’t make out Therese very distinctly. She,
however, having groped in dark cupboards, must have had her pupils sufficiently dilated to have seen that I had my hat
on my head. This has its importance because after what I had said to her upstairs it must have convinced her that I was
going out on some midnight business. I passed her without a word and heard behind me the door of the studio close with
an unexpected crash. It strikes me now that under the circumstances I might have without shame gone back to listen at
the keyhole. But truth to say the association of events was not so clear in my mind as it may be to the reader of this
story. Neither were the exact connections of persons present to my mind. And, besides, one doesn’t listen at a keyhole
but in pursuance of some plan; unless one is afflicted by a vulgar and fatuous curiosity. But that vice is not in my
character. As to plan, I had none. I moved along the passage between the dead wall and the black-and-white marble
elevation of the staircase with hushed footsteps, as though there had been a mortally sick person somewhere in the
house. And the only person that could have answered to that description was Senor Ortega. I moved on, stealthy,
absorbed, undecided; asking myself earnestly: “What on earth am I going to do with him?” That exclusive preoccupation
of my mind was as dangerous to Senor Ortega as typhoid fever would have been. It strikes me that this comparison is
very exact. People recover from typhoid fever, but generally the chance is considered poor. This was precisely his
case. His chance was poor; though I had no more animosity towards him than a virulent disease has against the victim it
lays low. He really would have nothing to reproach me with; he had run up against me, unwittingly, as a man enters an
infected place, and now he was very ill, very ill indeed. No, I had no plans against him. I had only the feeling that
he was in mortal danger.

I believe that men of the most daring character (and I make no claim to it) often do shrink from the logical
processes of thought. It is only the devil, they say, that loves logic. But I was not a devil. I was not even a victim
of the devil. It was only that I had given up the direction of my intelligence before the problem; or rather that the
problem had dispossessed my intelligence and reigned in its stead side by side with a superstitious awe. A dreadful
order seemed to lurk in the darkest shadows of life. The madness of that Carlist with the soul of a Jacobin, the vile
fears of Baron H., that excellent organizer of supplies, the contact of their two ferocious stupidities, and last, by a
remote disaster at sea, my love brought into direct contact with the situation: all that was enough to make one shudder
— not at the chance, but at the design.

For it was my love that was called upon to act here, and nothing else. And love which elevates us above all
safeguards, above restraining principles, above all littlenesses of self-possession, yet keeps its feet always firmly
on earth, remains marvellously practical in its suggestions.

I discovered that however much I had imagined I had given up Rita, that whatever agonies I had gone through, my hope
of her had never been lost. Plucked out, stamped down, torn to shreds, it had remained with me secret, intact,
invincible. Before the danger of the situation it sprang, full of life, up in arms — the undying child of immortal
love. What incited me was independent of honour and compassion; it was the prompting of a love supreme, practical,
remorseless in its aim; it was the practical thought that no woman need be counted as lost for ever, unless she be
dead!

This excluded for the moment all considerations of ways and means and risks and difficulties. Its tremendous
intensity robbed it of all direction and left me adrift in the big black-and-white hall as on a silent sea. It was not,
properly speaking, irresolution. It was merely hesitation as to the next immediate step, and that step even of no great
importance: hesitation merely as to the best way I could spend the rest of the night. I didn’t think further forward
for many reasons, more or less optimistic, but mainly because I have no homicidal vein in my composition. The
disposition to gloat over homicide was in that miserable creature in the studio, the potential Jacobin; in that
confounded buyer of agricultural produce, the punctual employe of Hernandez Brothers, the jealous wretch with an
obscene tongue and an imagination of the same kind to drive him mad. I thought of him without pity but also without
contempt. I reflected that there were no means of sending a warning to Dona Rita in Tolosa; for of course no postal
communication existed with the Headquarters. And moreover what would a warning be worth in this particular case,
supposing it would reach her, that she would believe it, and that she would know what to do? How could I communicate to
another that certitude which was in my mind, the more absolute because without proofs that one could produce?

The last expression of Rose’s distress rang again in my ears: “Madame has no friends. Not one!” and I saw Dona
Rita’s complete loneliness beset by all sorts of insincerities, surrounded by pitfalls; her greatest dangers within
herself, in her generosity, in her fears, in her courage, too. What I had to do first of all was to stop that wretch at
all costs. I became aware of a great mistrust of Therese. I didn’t want her to find me in the hall, but I was reluctant
to go upstairs to my rooms from an unreasonable feeling that there I would be too much out of the way; not sufficiently
on the spot. There was the alternative of a live-long night of watching outside, before the dark front of the house. It
was a most distasteful prospect. And then it occurred to me that Blunt’s former room would be an extremely good place
to keep a watch from. I knew that room. When Henry Allegre gave the house to Rita in the early days (long before he
made his will) he had planned a complete renovation and this room had been meant for the drawing-room. Furniture had
been made for it specially, upholstered in beautiful ribbed stuff, made to order, of dull gold colour with a pale blue
tracery of arabesques and oval medallions enclosing Rita’s monogram, repeated on the backs of chairs and sofas, and on
the heavy curtains reaching from ceiling to floor. To the same time belonged the ebony and bronze doors, the silver
statuette at the foot of the stairs, the forged iron balustrade reproducing right up the marble staircase Rita’s
decorative monogram in its complicated design. Afterwards the work was stopped and the house had fallen into disrepair.
When Rita devoted it to the Carlist cause a bed was put into that drawing-room, just simply the bed. The room next to
that yellow salon had been in Allegre’s young days fitted as a fencing-room containing also a bath, and a complicated
system of all sorts of shower and jet arrangements, then quite up to date. That room was very large, lighted from the
top, and one wall of it was covered by trophies of arms of all sorts, a choice collection of cold steel disposed on a
background of Indian mats and rugs Blunt used it as a dressing-room. It communicated by a small door with the
studio.

I had only to extend my hand and make one step to reach the magnificent bronze handle of the ebony door, and if I
didn’t want to be caught by Therese there was no time to lose. I made the step and extended the hand, thinking that it
would be just like my luck to find the door locked. But the door came open to my push. In contrast to the dark hall the
room was most unexpectedly dazzling to my eyes, as if illuminated a giorno for a reception. No voice came from it, but
nothing could have stopped me now. As I turned round to shut the door behind me noiselessly I caught sight of a woman’s
dress on a chair, of other articles of apparel scattered about. The mahogany bed with a piece of light silk which
Therese found somewhere and used for a counterpane was a magnificent combination of white and crimson between the
gleaming surfaces of dark wood; and the whole room had an air of splendour with marble consoles, gilt carvings, long
mirrors and a sumptuous Venetian lustre depending from the ceiling: a darkling mass of icy pendants catching a spark
here and there from the candles of an eight-branched candelabra standing on a little table near the head of a sofa
which had been dragged round to face the fireplace. The faintest possible whiff of a familiar perfume made my head swim
with its suggestion.

I grabbed the back of the nearest piece of furniture and the splendour of marbles and mirrors, of cut crystals and
carvings, swung before my eyes in the golden mist of walls and draperies round an extremely conspicuous pair of black
stockings thrown over a music stool which remained motionless. The silence was profound. It was like being in an
enchanted place. Suddenly a voice began to speak, clear, detached, infinitely touching in its calm weariness.

“Haven’t you tormented me enough to-day?” it said. . . . My head was steady now but my heart began to beat
violently. I listened to the end without moving, “Can’t you make up your mind to leave me alone for to-night?” It
pleaded with an accent of charitable scorn.

The penetrating quality of these tones which I had not heard for so many, many days made my eyes run full of tears.
I guessed easily that the appeal was addressed to the atrocious Therese. The speaker was concealed from me by the high
back of the sofa, but her apprehension was perfectly justified. For was it not I who had turned back Therese the pious,
the insatiable, coming downstairs in her nightgown to torment her sister some more? Mere surprise at Dona Rita’s
presence in the house was enough to paralyze me; but I was also overcome by an enormous sense of relief, by the
assurance of security for her and for myself. I didn’t even ask myself how she came there. It was enough for me that
she was not in Tolosa. I could have smiled at the thought that all I had to do now was to hasten the departure of that
abominable lunatic — for Tolosa: an easy task, almost no task at all. Yes, I would have smiled, had not I felt outraged
by the presence of Senor Ortega under the same roof with Dona Rita. The mere fact was repugnant to me, morally
revolting; so that I should have liked to rush at him and throw him out into the street. But that was not to be done
for various reasons. One of them was pity. I was suddenly at peace with all mankind, with all nature. I felt as if I
couldn’t hurt a fly. The intensity of my emotion sealed my lips. With a fearful joy tugging at my heart I moved round
the head of the couch without a word.

In the wide fireplace on a pile of white ashes the logs had a deep crimson glow; and turned towards them Dona Rita
reclined on her side enveloped in the skins of wild beasts like a charming and savage young chieftain before a camp
fire. She never even raised her eyes, giving me the opportunity to contemplate mutely that adolescent, delicately
masculine head, so mysteriously feminine in the power of instant seduction, so infinitely suave in its firm design,
almost childlike in the freshness of detail: altogether ravishing in the inspired strength of the modelling. That
precious head reposed in the palm of her hand; the face was slightly flushed (with anger perhaps). She kept her eyes
obstinately fixed on the pages of a book which she was holding with her other hand. I had the time to lay my infinite
adoration at her feet whose white insteps gleamed below the dark edge of the fur out of quilted blue silk bedroom
slippers, embroidered with small pearls. I had never seen them before; I mean the slippers. The gleam of the insteps,
too, for that matter. I lost myself in a feeling of deep content, something like a foretaste of a time of felicity
which must be quiet or it couldn’t be eternal. I had never tasted such perfect quietness before. It was not of this
earth. I had gone far beyond. It was as if I had reached the ultimate wisdom beyond all dreams and all passions. She
was That which is to be contemplated to all Infinity.

The perfect stillness and silence made her raise her eyes at last, reluctantly, with a hard, defensive expression
which I had never seen in them before. And no wonder! The glance was meant for Therese and assumed in self-defence. For
some time its character did not change and when it did it turned into a perfectly stony stare of a kind which I also
had never seen before. She had never wished so much to be left in peace. She had never been so astonished in her life.
She had arrived by the evening express only two hours before Senor Ortega, had driven to the house, and after having
something to eat had become for the rest of the evening the helpless prey of her sister who had fawned and scolded and
wheedled and threatened in a way that outraged all Rita’s feelings. Seizing this unexpected occasion Therese had
displayed a distracting versatility of sentiment: rapacity, virtue, piety, spite, and false tenderness — while,
characteristically enough, she unpacked the dressing-bag, helped the sinner to get ready for bed, brushed her hair, and
finally, as a climax, kissed her hands, partly by surprise and partly by violence. After that she had retired from the
field of battle slowly, undefeated, still defiant, firing as a last shot the impudent question: “Tell me only, have you
made your will, Rita?” To this poor Dona Rita with the spirit of opposition strung to the highest pitch answered: “No,
and I don’t mean to” — being under the impression that this was what her sister wanted her to do. There can be no
doubt, however, that all Therese wanted was the information.

Rita, much too agitated to expect anything but a sleepless night, had not the courage to get into bed. She thought
she would remain on the sofa before the fire and try to compose herself with a book. As she had no dressing-gown with
her she put on her long fur coat over her night-gown, threw some logs on the fire, and lay down. She didn’t hear the
slightest noise of any sort till she heard me shut the door gently. Quietness of movement was one of Therese’s
accomplishments, and the harassed heiress of the Allegre millions naturally thought it was her sister coming again to
renew the scene. Her heart sank within her. In the end she became a little frightened at the long silence, and raised
her eyes. She didn’t believe them for a long time. She concluded that I was a vision. In fact, the first word which I
heard her utter was a low, awed “No,” which, though I understood its meaning, chilled my blood like an evil omen.

It was then that I spoke. “Yes,” I said, “it’s me that you see,” and made a step forward. She didn’t start; only her
other hand flew to the edges of the fur coat, gripping them together over her breast. Observing this gesture I sat down
in the nearest chair. The book she had been reading slipped with a thump on the floor.

“How is it possible that you should be here?” she said, still in a doubting voice.

“I am really here,” I said. “Would you like to touch my hand?”

She didn’t move at all; her fingers still clutched the fur coat.

“What has happened?”

“It’s a long story, but you may take it from me that all is over. The tie between us is broken. I don’t know that it
was ever very close. It was an external thing. The true misfortune is that I have ever seen you.”

This last phrase was provoked by an exclamation of sympathy on her part. She raised herself on her elbow and looked
at me intently. “All over,” she murmured.

“Yes, we had to wreck the little vessel. It was awful. I feel like a murderer. But she had to be killed.”

“Why?”

“Because I loved her too much. Don’t you know that love and death go very close together?”

“I could feel almost happy that it is all over, if you hadn’t had to lose your love. Oh, amigo George, it was a safe
love for you.”

“Yes,” I said. “It was a faithful little vessel. She would have saved us all from any plain danger. But this was a
betrayal. It was — never mind. All that’s past. The question is what will the next one be.”

“Why should it be that?”

“I don’t know. Life seems but a series of betrayals. There are so many kinds of them. This was a betrayed plan, but
one can betray confidence, and hope and — desire, and the most sacred. . .”

“But what are you doing here?” she interrupted.

“Oh, yes! The eternal why. Till a few hours ago I didn’t know what I was here for. And what are you here for?” I
asked point blank and with a bitterness she disregarded. She even answered my question quite readily with many words
out of which I could make very little. I only learned that for at least five mixed reasons, none of which impressed me
profoundly, Dona Rita had started at a moment’s notice from Paris with nothing but a dressing-bag, and permitting Rose
to go and visit her aged parents for two days, and then follow her mistress. That girl of late had looked so perturbed
and worried that the sensitive Rita, fearing that she was tired of her place, proposed to settle a sum of money on her
which would have enabled her to devote herself entirely to her aged parents. And did I know what that extraordinary
girl said? She had said: “Don’t let Madame think that I would be too proud to accept anything whatever from her; but I
can’t even dream of leaving Madame. I believe Madame has no friends. Not one.” So instead of a large sum of money Dona
Rita gave the girl a kiss and as she had been worried by several people who wanted her to go to Tolosa she bolted down
this way just to get clear of all those busybodies. “Hide from them,” she went on with ardour. “Yes, I came here to
hide,” she repeated twice as if delighted at last to have hit on that reason among so many others. “How could I tell
that you would be here?” Then with sudden fire which only added to the delight with which I had been watching the play
of her physiognomy she added: “Why did you come into this room?”

She enchanted me. The ardent modulations of the sound, the slight play of the beautiful lips, the still, deep
sapphire gleam in those long eyes inherited from the dawn of ages and that seemed always to watch unimaginable things,
that underlying faint ripple of gaiety that played under all her moods as though it had been a gift from the high gods
moved to pity for this lonely mortal, all this within the four walls and displayed for me alone gave me the sense of
almost intolerable joy. The words didn’t matter. They had to be answered, of course.

“I came in for several reasons. One of them is that I didn’t know you were here.”

“Therese didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“Never talked to you about me?”

I hesitated only for a moment. “Never,” I said. Then I asked in my turn, “Did she tell you I was here?”

“No,” she said.

“It’s very clear she did not mean us to come together again.”

“Neither did I, my dear.”

“What do you mean by speaking like this, in this tone, in these words? You seem to use them as if they were a sort
of formula. Am I a dear to you? Or is anybody? . . . or everybody? . . .”

She had been for some time raised on her elbow, but then as if something had happened to her vitality she sank down
till her head rested again on the sofa cushion.

“Why do you try to hurt my feelings?” she asked.

“For the same reason for which you call me dear at the end of a sentence like that: for want of something more
amusing to do. You don’t pretend to make me believe that you do it for any sort of reason that a decent person would
confess to.”

The colour had gone from her face; but a fit of wickedness was on me and I pursued, “What are the motives of your
speeches? What prompts your actions? On your own showing your life seems to be a continuous running away. You have just
run away from Paris. Where will you run to-morrow? What are you everlastingly running from — or is it that you are
running after something? What is it? A man, a phantom — or some sensation that you don’t like to own to?”

Truth to say, I was abashed by the silence which was her only answer to this sally. I said to myself that I would
not let my natural anger, my just fury be disarmed by any assumption of pathos or dignity. I suppose I was really out
of my mind and what in the middle ages would have been called “possessed” by an evil spirit. I went on enjoying my own
villainy.

“Why aren’t you in Tolosa? You ought to be in Tolosa. Isn’t Tolosa the proper field for your abilities, for your
sympathies, for your profusions, for your generosities — the king without a crown, the man without a fortune! But here
there is nothing worthy of your talents. No, there is no longer anything worth any sort of trouble here. There isn’t
even that ridiculous Monsieur George. I understand that the talk of the coast from here to Cette is that Monsieur
George is drowned. Upon my word I believe he is. And serve him right, too. There’s Therese, but I don’t suppose that
your love for your sister . . .”

“For goodness’ sake don’t let her come in and find you here.”

Those words recalled me to myself, exorcised the evil spirit by the mere enchanting power of the voice. They were
also impressive by their suggestion of something practical, utilitarian, and remote from sentiment. The evil spirit
left me and I remained taken aback slightly.

“Well,” I said, “if you mean that you want me to leave the room I will confess to you that I can’t very well do it
yet. But I could lock both doors if you don’t mind that.”

“Do what you like as long as you keep her out. You two together would be too much for me to-night. Why don’t you go
and lock those doors? I have a feeling she is on the prowl.”

I got up at once saying, “I imagine she has gone to bed by this time.” I felt absolutely calm and responsible. I
turned the keys one after another so gently that I couldn’t hear the click of the locks myself. This done I recrossed
the room with measured steps, with downcast eyes, and approaching the couch without raising them from the carpet I sank
down on my knees and leaned my forehead on its edge. That penitential attitude had but little remorse in it. I detected
no movement and heard no sound from her. In one place a bit of the fur coat touched my cheek softly, but no forgiving
hand came to rest on my bowed head. I only breathed deeply the faint scent of violets, her own particular fragrance
enveloping my body, penetrating my very heart with an inconceivable intimacy, bringing me closer to her than the
closest embrace, and yet so subtle that I sensed her existence in me only as a great, glowing, indeterminate
tenderness, something like the evening light disclosing after the white passion of the day infinite depths in the
colours of the sky and an unsuspected soul of peace in the protean forms of life. I had not known such quietness for
months; and I detected in myself an immense fatigue, a longing to remain where I was without changing my position to
the end of time. Indeed to remain seemed to me a complete solution for all the problems that life presents — even as to
the very death itself.

Only the unwelcome reflection that this was impossible made me get up at last with a sigh of deep grief at the end
of the dream. But I got up without despair. She didn’t murmur, she didn’t stir. There was something august in the
stillness of the room. It was a strange peace which she shared with me in this unexpected shelter full of disorder in
its neglected splendour. What troubled me was the sudden, as it were material, consciousness of time passing as water
flows. It seemed to me that it was only the tenacity of my sentiment that held that woman’s body, extended and tranquil
above the flood. But when I ventured at last to look at her face I saw her flushed, her teeth clenched — it was visible
— her nostrils dilated, and in her narrow, level-glancing eyes a look of inward and frightened ecstasy. The edges of
the fur coat had fallen open and I was moved to turn away. I had the same impression as on the evening we parted that
something had happened which I did not understand; only this time I had not touched her at all. I really didn’t
understand. At the slightest whisper I would now have gone out without a murmur, as though that emotion had given her
the right to be obeyed. But there was no whisper; and for a long time I stood leaning on my arm, looking into the fire
and feeling distinctly between the four walls of that locked room the unchecked time flow past our two stranded
personalities.

And suddenly she spoke. She spoke in that voice that was so profoundly moving without ever being sad, a little
wistful perhaps and always the supreme expression of her grace. She asked as if nothing had happened:

“What are you thinking of, amigo?”

I turned about. She was lying on her side, tranquil above the smooth flow of time, again closely wrapped up in her
fur, her head resting on the old-gold sofa cushion bearing like everything else in that room the decoratively enlaced
letters of her monogram; her face a little pale now, with the crimson lobe of her ear under the tawny mist of her loose
hair, the lips a little parted, and her glance of melted sapphire level and motionless, darkened by fatigue.

“Can I think of anything but you?” I murmured, taking a seat near the foot of the couch. “Or rather it isn’t
thinking, it is more like the consciousness of you always being present in me, complete to the last hair, to the
faintest shade of expression, and that not only when we are apart but when we are together, alone, as close as this. I
see you now lying on this couch but that is only the insensible phantom of the real you that is in me. And it is the
easier for me to feel this because that image which others see and call by your name — how am I to know that it is
anything else but an enchanting mist? You have always eluded me except in one or two moments which seem still more
dream-like than the rest. Since I came into this room you have done nothing to destroy my conviction of your unreality
apart from myself. You haven’t offered me your hand to touch. Is it because you suspect that apart from me you are but
a mere phantom, and that you fear to put it to the test?”

One of her hands was under the fur and the other under her cheek. She made no sound. She didn’t offer to stir. She
didn’t move her eyes, not even after I had added after waiting for a while,

“Just what I expected. You are a cold illusion.”

She smiled mysteriously, right away from me, straight at the fire, and that was all.

Chapter 6

I had a momentary suspicion that I had said something stupid. Her smile amongst many other things
seemed to have meant that, too. And I answered it with a certain resignation:

“Well, I don’t know that you are so much mist. I remember once hanging on to you like a drowning man . . .
But perhaps I had better not speak of this. It wasn’t so very long ago, and you may . . . ”

“I don’t mind. Well. . .”

“Well, I have kept an impression of great solidity. I’ll admit that. A woman of granite.”

“A doctor once told me that I was made to last for ever,” she said.

“But essentially it’s the same thing,” I went on. “Granite, too, is insensible.”

I watched her profile against the pillow and there came on her face an expression I knew well when with an
indignation full of suppressed laughter she used to throw at me the word “Imbecile.” I expected it to come, but it
didn’t come. I must say, though, that I was swimmy in my head and now and then had a noise as of the sea in my ears, so
I might not have heard it. The woman of granite, built to last for ever, continued to look at the glowing logs which
made a sort of fiery ruin on the white pile of ashes. “I will tell you how it is,” I said. “When I have you before my
eyes there is such a projection of my whole being towards you that I fail to see you distinctly. It was like that from
the beginning. I may say that I never saw you distinctly till after we had parted and I thought you had gone from my
sight for ever. It was then that you took body in my imagination and that my mind seized on a definite form of you for
all its adorations — for its profanations, too. Don’t imagine me grovelling in spiritual abasement before a mere image.
I got a grip on you that nothing can shake now.”

“Don’t speak like this,” she said. “It’s too much for me. And there is a whole long night before us.”

“You don’t think that I dealt with you sentimentally enough perhaps? But the sentiment was there; as clear a flame
as ever burned on earth from the most remote ages before that eternal thing which is in you, which is your heirloom.
And is it my fault that what I had to give was real flame, and not a mystic’s incense? It is neither your fault nor
mine. And now whatever we say to each other at night or in daylight, that sentiment must be taken for granted. It will
be there on the day I die — when you won’t be there.”

She continued to look fixedly at the red embers; and from her lips that hardly moved came the quietest possible
whisper: “Nothing would be easier than to die for you.”

“Really,” I cried. “And you expect me perhaps after this to kiss your feet in a transport of gratitude while I hug
the pride of your words to my breast. But as it happens there is nothing in me but contempt for this sublime
declaration. How dare you offer me this charlatanism of passion? What has it got to do between you and me who are the
only two beings in the world that may safely say that we have no need of shams between ourselves? Is it possible that
you are a charlatan at heart? Not from egoism, I admit, but from some sort of fear. Yet, should you be sincere, then —
listen well to me — I would never forgive you. I would visit your grave every day to curse you for an evil thing.”

“Evil thing,” she echoed softly.

“Would you prefer to be a sham — that one could forget?”

“You will never forget me,” she said in the same tone at the glowing embers. “Evil or good. But, my dear, I feel
neither an evil nor a sham. I have got to be what I am, and that, amigo, is not so easy; because I may be simple, but
like all those on whom there is no peace I am not One. No, I am not One!”

“You are all the women in the world,” I whispered bending over her. She didn’t seem to be aware of anything and only
spoke — always to the glow.

“If I were that I would say: God help them then. But that would be more appropriate for Therese. For me, I can only
give them my infinite compassion. I have too much reverence in me to invoke the name of a God of whom clever men have
robbed me a long time ago. How could I help it? For the talk was clever and — and I had a mind. And I am also, as
Therese says, naturally sinful. Yes, my dear, I may be naturally wicked but I am not evil and I could die for you.”

“You!” I said. “You are afraid to die.”

“Yes. But not for you.”

The whole structure of glowing logs fell down, raising a small turmoil of white ashes and sparks. The tiny crash
seemed to wake her up thoroughly. She turned her head upon the cushion to look at me.

“It’s a very extraordinary thing, we two coming together like this,” she said with conviction. “You coming in
without knowing I was here and then telling me that you can’t very well go out of the room. That sounds funny. I
wouldn’t have been angry if you had said that you wouldn’t. It would have hurt me. But nobody ever paid much attention
to my feelings. Why do you smile like this?”

“At a thought. Without any charlatanism of passion I am able to tell you of something to match your devotion. I was
not afraid for your sake to come within a hair’s breadth of what to all the world would have been a squalid crime. Note
that you and I are persons of honour. And there might have been a criminal trial at the end of it for me. Perhaps the
scaffold.”

“Do you say these horrors to make me tremble?”

“Oh, you needn’t tremble. There shall be no crime. I need not risk the scaffold, since now you are safe. But I
entered this room meditating resolutely on the ways of murder, calculating possibilities and chances without the
slightest compunction. It’s all over now. It was all over directly I saw you here, but it had been so near that I
shudder yet.”

She must have been very startled because for a time she couldn’t speak. Then in a faint voice:

“For me! For me!” she faltered out twice.

“For you — or for myself? Yet it couldn’t have been selfish. What would it have been to me that you remained in the
world? I never expected to see you again. I even composed a most beautiful letter of farewell. Such a letter as no
woman had ever received.”

Instantly she shot out a hand towards me. The edges of the fur cloak fell apart. A wave of the faintest possible
scent floated into my nostrils.

“Let me have it,” she said imperiously.

“You can’t have it. It’s all in my head. No woman will read it. I suspect it was something that could never have
been written. But what a farewell! And now I suppose we shall say good-bye without even a handshake. But you are safe!
Only I must ask you not to come out of this room till I tell you you may.”

I was extremely anxious that Senor Ortega should never even catch a glimpse of Dona Rita, never guess how near he
had been to her. I was extremely anxious the fellow should depart for Tolosa and get shot in a ravine; or go to the
Devil in his own way, as long as he lost the track of Dona Rita completely. He then, probably, would get mad and get
shut up, or else get cured, forget all about it, and devote himself to his vocation, whatever it was — keep a shop and
grow fat. All this flashed through my mind in an instant and while I was still dazzled by those comforting images, the
voice of Dona Rita pulled me up with a jerk.

“You mean not out of the house?”

“No, I mean not out of this room,” I said with some embarrassment.

“What do you mean? Is there something in the house then? This is most extraordinary! Stay in this room? And you,
too, it seems? Are you also afraid for yourself?”

“I can’t even give you an idea how afraid I was. I am not so much now. But you know very well, Dona Rita, that I
never carry any sort of weapon in my pocket.”

“Why don’t you, then?” she asked in a flash of scorn which bewitched me so completely for an instant that I couldn’t
even smile at it.

“Because if I am unconventionalized I am an old European,” I murmured gently. “No, Excellentissima, I shall go
through life without as much as a switch in my hand. It’s no use you being angry. Adapting to this great moment some
words you’ve heard before: I am like that. Such is my character!”

Dona Rita frankly stared at me — a most unusual expression for her to have. Suddenly she sat up.

“Don George,” she said with lovely animation, “I insist upon knowing who is in my house.”

“You insist! . . . But Therese says it is her house.”

Had there been anything handy, such as a cigarette box, for instance, it would have gone sailing through the air
spouting cigarettes as it went. Rosy all over, cheeks, neck, shoulders, she seemed lighted up softly from inside like a
beautiful transparency. But she didn’t raise her voice.

“You and Therese have sworn my ruin. If you don’t tell me what you mean I will go outside and shout up the stairs to
make her come down. I know there is no one but the three of us in the house.”

“Yes, three; but not counting my Jacobin. There is a Jacobin in the house.”

“A Jac. . .! Oh, George, is this the time to jest?” she began in persuasive tones when a faint but peculiar noise
stilled her lips as though they had been suddenly frozen. She became quiet all over instantly. I, on the contrary, made
an involuntary movement before I, too, became as still as death. We strained our ears; but that peculiar metallic
rattle had been so slight and the silence now was so perfect that it was very difficult to believe one’s senses. Dona
Rita looked inquisitively at me. I gave her a slight nod. We remained looking into each other’s eyes while we listened
and listened till the silence became unbearable. Dona Rita whispered composedly: “Did you hear?”

“I am asking myself . . . I almost think I didn’t.”

“Don’t shuffle with me. It was a scraping noise.”

“Something fell.”

“Something! What thing? What are the things that fall by themselves? Who is that man of whom you spoke? Is there a
man?”

“No doubt about it whatever. I brought him here myself.”

“What for?”

“Why shouldn’t I have a Jacobin of my own? Haven’t you one, too? But mine is a different problem from that
white-haired humbug of yours. He is a genuine article. There must be plenty like him about. He has scores to settle
with half a dozen people, he says, and he clamours for revolutions to give him a chance.”

“But why did you bring him here?”

“I don’t know — from sudden affection . . . ”

All this passed in such low tones that we seemed to make out the words more by watching each other’s lips than
through our sense of hearing. Man is a strange animal. I didn’t care what I said. All I wanted was to keep her in her
pose, excited and still, sitting up with her hair loose, softly glowing, the dark brown fur making a wonderful contrast
with the white lace on her breast. All I was thinking of was that she was adorable and too lovely for words! I cared
for nothing but that sublimely aesthetic impression. It summed up all life, all joy, all poetry! It had a divine
strain. I am certain that I was not in my right mind. I suppose I was not quite sane. I am convinced that at that
moment of the four people in the house it was Dona Rita who upon the whole was the most sane. She observed my face and
I am sure she read there something of my inward exaltation. She knew what to do. In the softest possible tone and
hardly above her breath she commanded: “George, come to yourself.”

Her gentleness had the effect of evening light. I was soothed. Her confidence in her own power touched me
profoundly. I suppose my love was too great for madness to get hold of me. I can’t say that I passed to a complete
calm, but I became slightly ashamed of myself. I whispered:

“No, it was not from affection, it was for the love of you that I brought him here. That imbecile H. was going to
send him to Tolosa.”

“That Jacobin!” Dona Rita was immensely surprised, as she might well have been. Then resigned to the
incomprehensible: “Yes,” she breathed out, “what did you do with him?”

“I put him to bed in the studio.”

How lovely she was with the effort of close attention depicted in the turn of her head and in her whole face
honestly trying to approve. “And then?” she inquired.

“Then I came in here to face calmly the necessity of doing away with a human life. I didn’t shirk it for a moment.
That’s what a short twelvemonth has brought me to. Don’t think I am reproaching you, O blind force! You are justified
because you ARE. Whatever had to happen you would not even have heard of it.”

Horror darkened her marvellous radiance. Then her face became utterly blank with the tremendous effort to
understand. Absolute silence reigned in the house. It seemed to me that everything had been said now that mattered in
the world; and that the world itself had reached its ultimate stage, had reached its appointed end of an eternal,
phantom-like silence. Suddenly Dona Rita raised a warning finger. I had heard nothing and shook my head; but she nodded
hers and murmured excitedly,

“Yes, yes, in the fencing-room, as before.”

In the same way I answered her: “Impossible! The door is locked and Therese has the key.” She asked then in the most
cautious manner,

“Have you seen Therese to-night?”

“Yes,” I confessed without misgiving. “I left her making up the fellow’s bed when I came in here.”

“The bed of the Jacobin?” she said in a peculiar tone as if she were humouring a lunatic.

“I think I had better tell you he is a Spaniard — that he seems to know you from early days . . . .” I
glanced at her face, it was extremely tense, apprehensive. For myself I had no longer any doubt as to the man and I
hoped she would reach the correct conclusion herself. But I believe she was too distracted and worried to think
consecutively. She only seemed to feel some terror in the air. In very pity I bent down and whispered carefully near
her ear, “His name is Ortega.”

I expected some effect from that name but I never expected what happened. With the sudden, free, spontaneous agility
of a young animal she leaped off the sofa, leaving her slippers behind, and in one bound reached almost the middle of
the room. The vigour, the instinctive precision of that spring, were something amazing. I just escaped being knocked
over. She landed lightly on her bare feet with a perfect balance, without the slightest suspicion of swaying in her
instant immobility. It lasted less than a second, then she spun round distractedly and darted at the first door she
could see. My own agility was just enough to enable me to grip the back of the fur coat and then catch her round the
body before she could wriggle herself out of the sleeves. She was muttering all the time, “No, no, no.” She abandoned
herself to me just for an instant during which I got her back to the middle of the room. There she attempted to free
herself and I let her go at once. With her face very close to mine, but apparently not knowing what she was looking at
she repeated again twice, “No — No,” with an intonation which might well have brought dampness to my eyes but which
only made me regret that I didn’t kill the honest Ortega at sight. Suddenly Dona Rita swung round and seizing her loose
hair with both hands started twisting it up before one of the sumptuous mirrors. The wide fur sleeves slipped down her
white arms. In a brusque movement like a downward stab she transfixed the whole mass of tawny glints and sparks with
the arrow of gold which she perceived lying there, before her, on the marble console. Then she sprang away from the
glass muttering feverishly, “Out — out — out of this house,” and trying with an awful, senseless stare to dodge past me
who had put myself in her way with open arms. At last I managed to seize her by the shoulders and in the extremity of
my distress I shook her roughly. If she hadn’t quieted down then I believe my heart would have broken. I spluttered
right into her face: “I won’t let you. Here you stay.” She seemed to recognize me at last, and suddenly still,
perfectly firm on her white feet, she let her arms fall and, from an abyss of desolation, whispered, “O! George! No!
No! Not Ortega.”

There was a passion of mature grief in this tone of appeal. And yet she remained as touching and helpless as a
distressed child. It had all the simplicity and depth of a child’s emotion. It tugged at one’s heart-strings in the
same direct way. But what could one do? How could one soothe her? It was impossible to pat her on the head, take her on
the knee, give her a chocolate or show her a picture-book. I found myself absolutely without resource. Completely at a
loss.

“Yes, Ortega. Well, what of it?” I whispered with immense assurance.

Chapter 7

My brain was in a whirl. I am safe to say that at this precise moment there was nobody completely
sane in the house. Setting apart Therese and Ortega, both in the grip of unspeakable passions, all the moral economy of
Dona Rita had gone to pieces. Everything was gone except her strong sense of life with all its implied menaces. The
woman was a mere chaos of sensations and vitality. I, too, suffered most from inability to get hold of some fundamental
thought. The one on which I could best build some hopes was the thought that, of course, Ortega did not know anything.
I whispered this into the ear of Dona Rita, into her precious, her beautifully shaped ear.

But she shook her head, very much like an inconsolable child and very much with a child’s complete pessimism she
murmured, “Therese has told him.”

The words, “Oh, nonsense,” never passed my lips, because I could not cheat myself into denying that there had been a
noise; and that the noise was in the fencing-room. I knew that room. There was nothing there that by the wildest
stretch of imagination could be conceived as falling with that particular sound. There was a table with a tall strip of
looking-glass above it at one end; but since Blunt took away his campaigning kit there was no small object of any sort
on the console or anywhere else that could have been jarred off in some mysterious manner. Along one of the walls there
was the whole complicated apparatus of solid brass pipes, and quite close to it an enormous bath sunk into the floor.
The greatest part of the room along its whole length was covered with matting and had nothing else but a long, narrow
leather-upholstered bench fixed to the wall. And that was all. And the door leading to the studio was locked. And
Therese had the key. And it flashed on my mind, independently of Dona Rita’s pessimism, by the force of personal
conviction, that, of course, Therese would tell him. I beheld the whole succession of events perfectly connected and
tending to that particular conclusion. Therese would tell him! I could see the contrasted heads of those two formidable
lunatics close together in a dark mist of whispers compounded of greed, piety, and jealousy, plotting in a sense of
perfect security as if under the very wing of Providence. So at least Therese would think. She could not be but under
the impression that (providentially) I had been called out for the rest of the night.

And now there was one sane person in the house, for I had regained complete command of my thoughts. Working in a
logical succession of images they showed me at last as clearly as a picture on a wall, Therese pressing with fervour
the key into the fevered palm of the rich, prestigious, virtuous cousin, so that he should go and urge his
self-sacrificing offer to Rita, and gain merit before Him whose Eye sees all the actions of men. And this image of
those two with the key in the studio seemed to me a most monstrous conception of fanaticism, of a perfectly horrible
aberration. For who could mistake the state that made Jose Ortega the figure he was, inspiring both pity and fear? I
could not deny that I understood, not the full extent but the exact nature of his suffering. Young as I was I had
solved for myself that grotesque and sombre personality. His contact with me, the personal contact with (as he thought)
one of the actual lovers of that woman who brought to him as a boy the curse of the gods, had tipped over the trembling
scales. No doubt I was very near death in the “grand salon” of the Maison Doree, only that his torture had gone too
far. It seemed to me that I ought to have heard his very soul scream while we were seated at supper. But in a moment he
had ceased to care for me. I was nothing. To the crazy exaggeration of his jealousy I was but one amongst a hundred
thousand. What was my death? Nothing. All mankind had possessed that woman. I knew what his wooing of her would be:
Mine — or Dead.

All this ought to have had the clearness of noon-day, even to the veriest idiot that ever lived; and Therese was,
properly speaking, exactly that. An idiot. A one-ideaed creature. Only the idea was complex; therefore it was
impossible really to say what she wasn’t capable of. This was what made her obscure processes so awful. She had at
times the most amazing perceptions. Who could tell where her simplicity ended and her cunning began? She had also the
faculty of never forgetting any fact bearing upon her one idea; and I remembered now that the conversation with me
about the will had produced on her an indelible impression of the Law’s surprising justice. Recalling her naive
admiration of the “just” law that required no “paper” from a sister, I saw her casting loose the raging fate with a
sanctimonious air. And Therese would naturally give the key of the fencing-room to her dear, virtuous, grateful,
disinterested cousin, to that damned soul with delicate whiskers, because she would think it just possible that Rita
might have locked the door leading front her room into the hall; whereas there was no earthly reason, not the slightest
likelihood, that she would bother about the other. Righteousness demanded that the erring sister should be taken
unawares.

All the above is the analysis of one short moment. Images are to words like light to sound — incomparably swifter.
And all this was really one flash of light through my mind. A comforting thought succeeded it: that both doors were
locked and that really there was no danger.

However, there had been that noise — the why and the how of it? Of course in the dark he might have fallen into the
bath, but that wouldn’t have been a faint noise. It wouldn’t have been a rattle. There was absolutely nothing he could
knock over. He might have dropped a candle-stick if Therese had left him her own. That was possible, but then those
thick mats — and then, anyway, why should he drop it? and, hang it all, why shouldn’t he have gone straight on and
tried the door? I had suddenly a sickening vision of the fellow crouching at the key-hole, listening, listening,
listening, for some movement or sigh of the sleeper he was ready to tear away from the world, alive or dead. I had a
conviction that he was still listening. Why? Goodness knows! He may have been only gloating over the assurance that the
night was long and that he had all these hours to himself.

I was pretty certain that he could have heard nothing of our whispers, the room was too big for that and the door
too solid. I hadn’t the same confidence in the efficiency of the lock. Still I . . . Guarding my lips with my
hand I urged Dona Rita to go back to the sofa. She wouldn’t answer me and when I got hold of her arm I discovered that
she wouldn’t move. She had taken root in that thick-pile Aubusson carpet; and she was so rigidly still all over that
the brilliant stones in the shaft of the arrow of gold, with the six candles at the head of the sofa blazing full on
them, emitted no sparkle.

I was extremely anxious that she shouldn’t betray herself. I reasoned, save the mark, as a psychologist. I had no
doubt that the man knew of her being there; but he only knew it by hearsay. And that was bad enough. I could not help
feeling that if he obtained some evidence for his senses by any sort of noise, voice, or movement, his madness would
gain strength enough to burst the lock. I was rather ridiculously worried about the locks. A horrid mistrust of the
whole house possessed me. I saw it in the light of a deadly trap. I had no weapon, I couldn’t say whether he had one or
not. I wasn’t afraid of a struggle as far as I, myself, was concerned, but I was afraid of it for Dona Rita. To be
rolling at her feet, locked in a literally tooth-and-nail struggle with Ortega would have been odious. I wanted to
spare her feelings, just as I would have been anxious to save from any contact with mud the feet of that goatherd of
the mountains with a symbolic face. I looked at her face. For immobility it might have been a carving. I wished I knew
how to deal with that embodied mystery, to influence it, to manage it. Oh, how I longed for the gift of authority! In
addition, since I had become completely sane, all my scruples against laying hold of her had returned. I felt shy and
embarrassed. My eyes were fixed on the bronze handle of the fencing-room door as if it were something alive. I braced
myself up against the moment when it would move. This was what was going to happen next. It would move very gently. My
heart began to thump. But I was prepared to keep myself as still as death and I hoped Dona Rita would have sense enough
to do the same. I stole another glance at her face and at that moment I heard the word: “Beloved!” form itself in the
still air of the room, weak, distinct, piteous, like the last request of the dying.

With great presence of mind I whispered into Dona Rita’s ear: “Perfect silence!” and was overjoyed to discover that
she had heard me, understood me; that she even had command over her rigid lips. She answered me in a breath (our cheeks
were nearly touching): “Take me out of this house.”

I glanced at all her clothing scattered about the room and hissed forcibly the warning “Perfect immobility”;
noticing with relief that she didn’t offer to move, though animation was returning to her and her lips had remained
parted in an awful, unintended effect of a smile. And I don’t know whether I was pleased when she, who was not to be
touched, gripped my wrist suddenly. It had the air of being done on purpose because almost instantly another:
“Beloved!” louder, more agonized if possible, got into the room and, yes, went home to my heart. It was followed
without any transition, preparation, or warning, by a positively bellowed: “Speak, perjured beast!” which I felt pass
in a thrill right through Dona Rita like an electric shock, leaving her as motionless as before.

Till he shook the door handle, which he did immediately afterwards, I wasn’t certain through which door he had
spoken. The two doors (in different walls) were rather near each other. It was as I expected. He was in the
fencing-room, thoroughly aroused, his senses on the alert to catch the slightest sound. A situation not to be trifled
with. Leaving the room was for us out of the question. It was quite possible for him to dash round into the hall before
we could get clear of the front door. As to making a bolt of it upstairs there was the same objection; and to allow
ourselves to be chased all over the empty house by this maniac would have been mere folly. There was no advantage in
locking ourselves up anywhere upstairs where the original doors and locks were much lighter. No, true safety was in
absolute stillness and silence, so that even his rage should be brought to doubt at last and die expended, or choke him
before it died; I didn’t care which.

For me to go out and meet him would have been stupid. Now I was certain that he was armed. I had remembered the wall
in the fencing-room decorated with trophies of cold steel in all the civilized and savage forms; sheaves of assegais,
in the guise of columns and grouped between them stars and suns of choppers, swords, knives; from Italy, from Damascus,
from Abyssinia, from the ends of the world. Ortega had only to make his barbarous choice. I suppose he had got up on
the bench, and fumbling about amongst them must have brought one down, which, falling, had produced that rattling
noise. But in any case to go to meet him would have been folly, because, after all, I might have been overpowered (even
with bare hands) and then Dona Rita would have been left utterly defenceless.

“He will speak,” came to me the ghostly, terrified murmur of her voice. “Take me out of the house before he begins
to speak.”

“Keep still,” I whispered. “He will soon get tired of this.”

“You don’t know him.”

“Oh, yes, I do. Been with him two hours.”

At this she let go my wrist and covered her face with her hands passionately. When she dropped them she had the look
of one morally crushed.

“What did he say to you?”

“He raved.”

“Listen to me. It was all true!”

“I daresay, but what of that?”

These ghostly words passed between us hardly louder than thoughts; but after my last answer she ceased and gave me a
searching stare, then drew in a long breath. The voice on the other side of the door burst out with an impassioned
request for a little pity, just a little, and went on begging for a few words, for two words, for one word — one poor
little word. Then it gave up, then repeated once more, “Say you are there, Rita, Say one word, just one word. Say
‘yes.’ Come! Just one little yes.”

“You see,” I said. She only lowered her eyelids over the anxious glance she had turned on me.

For a minute we could have had the illusion that he had stolen away, unheard, on the thick mats. But I don’t think
that either of us was deceived. The voice returned, stammering words without connection, pausing and faltering, till
suddenly steadied it soared into impassioned entreaty, sank to low, harsh tones, voluble, lofty sometimes and sometimes
abject. When it paused it left us looking profoundly at each other.

“It’s almost comic,” I whispered.

“Yes. One could laugh,” she assented, with a sort of sinister conviction. Never had I seen her look exactly like
that, for an instant another, an incredible Rita! “Haven’t I laughed at him innumerable times?” she added in a sombre
whisper.

He was muttering to himself out there, and unexpectedly shouted: “What?” as though he had fancied he had heard
something. He waited a while before he started up again with a loud: “Speak up, Queen of the goats, with your goat
tricks. . .” All was still for a time, then came a most awful bang on the door. He must have stepped back a pace to
hurl himself bodily against the panels. The whole house seemed to shake. He repeated that performance once more, and
then varied it by a prolonged drumming with his fists. It WAS comic. But I felt myself struggling mentally with an
invading gloom as though I were no longer sure of myself.

“Take me out,” whispered Dona Rita feverishly, “take me out of this house before it is too late.”

“You will have to stand it,” I answered.

“So be it; but then you must go away yourself. Go now, before it is too late.”

I didn’t condescend to answer this. The drumming on the panels stopped and the absurd thunder of it died out in the
house. I don’t know why precisely then I had the acute vision of the red mouth of Jose Ortega wriggling with rage
between his funny whiskers. He began afresh but in a tired tone:

“Do you expect a fellow to forget your tricks, you wicked little devil? Haven’t you ever seen me dodging about to
get a sight of you amongst those pretty gentlemen, on horseback, like a princess, with pure cheeks like a carved saint?
I wonder I didn’t throw stones at you, I wonder I didn’t run after you shouting the tale — curse my timidity! But I
daresay they knew as much as I did. More. All the new tricks — if that were possible.”

While he was making this uproar, Dona Rita put her fingers in her ears and then suddenly changed her mind and
clapped her hands over my ears. Instinctively I disengaged my head but she persisted. We had a short tussle without
moving from the spot, and suddenly I had my head free, and there was complete silence. He had screamed himself out of
breath, but Dona Rita muttering; “Too late, too late,” got her hands away from my grip and slipping altogether out of
her fur coat seized some garment lying on a chair near by (I think it was her skirt), with the intention of dressing
herself, I imagine, and rushing out of the house. Determined to prevent this, but indeed without thinking very much
what I was doing, I got hold of her arm. That struggle was silent, too; but I used the least force possible and she
managed to give me an unexpected push. Stepping back to save myself from falling I overturned the little table, bearing
the six-branched candlestick. It hit the floor, rebounded with a dull ring on the carpet, and by the time it came to a
rest every single candle was out. He on the other side of the door naturally heard the noise and greeted it with a
triumphant screech: “Aha! I’ve managed to wake you up,” the very savagery of which had a laughable effect. I felt the
weight of Dona Rita grow on my arm and thought it best to let her sink on the floor, wishing to be free in my movements
and really afraid that now he had actually heard a noise he would infallibly burst the door. But he didn’t even thump
it. He seemed to have exhausted himself in that scream. There was no other light in the room but the darkened glow of
the embers and I could hardly make out amongst the shadows of furniture Dona Rita sunk on her knees in a penitential
and despairing attitude. Before this collapse I, who had been wrestling desperately with her a moment before, felt that
I dare not touch her. This emotion, too, I could not understand; this abandonment of herself, this conscience-stricken
humility. A humbly imploring request to open the door came from the other side. Ortega kept on repeating: “Open the
door, open the door,” in such an amazing variety of intonations, imperative, whining, persuasive, insinuating, and even
unexpectedly jocose, that I really stood there smiling to myself, yet with a gloomy and uneasy heart. Then he remarked,
parenthetically as it were, “Oh, you know how to torment a man, you brown-skinned, lean, grinning, dishevelled imp,
you. And mark,” he expounded further, in a curiously doctoral tone — “you are in all your limbs hateful: your eyes are
hateful and your mouth is hateful, and your hair is hateful, and your body is cold and vicious like a snake — and
altogether you are perdition.”

This statement was astonishingly deliberate. He drew a moaning breath after it and uttered in a heart-rending tone,
“You know, Rita, that I cannot live without you. I haven’t lived. I am not living now. This isn’t life. Come, Rita, you
can’t take a boy’s soul away and then let him grow up and go about the world, poor devil, while you go amongst the rich
from one pair of arms to another, showing all your best tricks. But I will forgive you if you only open the door,” he
ended in an inflated tone: “You remember how you swore time after time to be my wife. You are more fit to be Satan’s
wife but I don’t mind. You shall be my wife!”

A sound near the floor made me bend down hastily with a stern: “Don’t laugh,” for in his grotesque, almost burlesque
discourses there seemed to me to be truth, passion, and horror enough to move a mountain.

Suddenly suspicion seized him out there. With perfectly farcical unexpectedness he yelled shrilly: “Oh, you
deceitful wretch! You won’t escape me! I will have you . . . .”

And in a manner of speaking he vanished. Of course I couldn’t see him but somehow that was the impression. I had
hardly time to receive it when crash! . . . he was already at the other door. I suppose he thought that his
prey was escaping him. His swiftness was amazing, almost inconceivable, more like the effect of a trick or of a
mechanism. The thump on the door was awful as if he had not been able to stop himself in time. The shock seemed enough
to stun an elephant. It was really funny. And after the crash there was a moment of silence as if he were recovering
himself. The next thing was a low grunt, and at once he picked up the thread of his fixed idea.

“You will have to be my wife. I have no shame. You swore you would be and so you will have to be.” Stifled low
sounds made me bend down again to the kneeling form, white in the flush of the dark red glow. “For goodness’ sake
don’t,” I whispered down. She was struggling with an appalling fit of merriment, repeating to herself, “Yes, every day,
for two months. Sixty times at least, sixty times at least.” Her voice was rising high. She was struggling against
laughter, but when I tried to put my hand over her lips I felt her face wet with tears. She turned it this way and
that, eluding my hand with repressed low, little moans. I lost my caution and said, “Be quiet,” so sharply as to
startle myself (and her, too) into expectant stillness.

Ortega’s voice in the hall asked distinctly: “Eh? What’s this?” and then he kept still on his side listening, but he
must have thought that his ears had deceived him. He was getting tired, too. He was keeping quiet out there — resting.
Presently he sighed deeply; then in a harsh melancholy tone he started again.

“My love, my soul, my life, do speak to me. What am I that you should take so much trouble to pretend that you
aren’t there? Do speak to me,” he repeated tremulously, following this mechanical appeal with a string of extravagantly
endearing names, some of them quite childish, which all of a sudden stopped dead; and then after a pause there came a
distinct, unutterably weary: “What shall I do now?” as though he were speaking to himself.

I shuddered to hear rising from the floor, by my side, a vibrating, scornful: “Do! Why, slink off home looking over
your shoulder as you used to years ago when I had done with you — all but the laughter.”

“Rita,” I murmured, appalled. He must have been struck dumb for a moment. Then, goodness only knows why, in his
dismay or rage he was moved to speak in French with a most ridiculous accent.

“So you have found your tongue at last — CATIN! You were that from the cradle. Don’t you remember how. . .”

Dona Rita sprang to her feet at my side with a loud cry, “No, George, no,” which bewildered me completely. The
suddenness, the loudness of it made the ensuing silence on both sides of the door perfectly awful. It seemed to me that
if I didn’t resist with all my might something in me would die on the instant. In the straight, falling folds of the
night-dress she looked cold like a block of marble; while I, too, was turned into stone by the terrific clamour in the
hall.

“Therese, Therese,” yelled Ortega. “She has got a man in there.” He ran to the foot of the stairs and screamed
again, “Therese, Therese! There is a man with her. A man! Come down, you miserable, starved peasant, come down and
see.”

I don’t know where Therese was but I am sure that this voice reached her, terrible, as if clamouring to heaven, and
with a shrill over-note which made me certain that if she was in bed the only thing she would think of doing would be
to put her head under the bed-clothes. With a final yell: “Come down and see,” he flew back at the door of the room and
started shaking it violently.

It was a double door, very tall, and there must have been a lot of things loose about its fittings, bolts, latches,
and all those brass applications with broken screws, because it rattled, it clattered, it jingled; and produced also
the sound as of thunder rolling in the big, empty hall. It was deafening, distressing, and vaguely alarming as if it
could bring the house down. At the same time the futility of it had, it cannot be denied, a comic effect. The very
magnitude of the racket he raised was funny. But he couldn’t keep up that violent exertion continuously, and when he
stopped to rest we could hear him shouting to himself in vengeful tones. He saw it all! He had been decoyed there!
(Rattle, rattle, rattle.) He had been decoyed into that town, he screamed, getting more and more excited by the noise
he made himself, in order to be exposed to this! (Rattle, rattle.) By this shameless CATIN! CATIN! CATIN!”

He started at the door again with superhuman vigour. Behind me I heard Dona Rita laughing softly, statuesque, turned
all dark in the fading glow. I called out to her quite openly, “Do keep your self-control.” And she called back to me
in a clear voice: “Oh, my dear, will you ever consent to speak to me after all this? But don’t ask for the impossible.
He was born to be laughed at.”

“Yes,” I cried. “But don’t let yourself go.”

I don’t know whether Ortega heard us. He was exerting then his utmost strength of lung against the infamous plot to
expose him to the derision of the fiendish associates of that obscene woman! . . . Then he began another
interlude upon the door, so sustained and strong that I had the thought that this was growing absurdly impossible, that
either the plaster would begin to fall off the ceiling or he would drop dead next moment, out there.

He stopped, uttered a few curses at the door, and seemed calmer from sheer exhaustion.

“This story will be all over the world,” we heard him begin. “Deceived, decoyed, inveighed, in order to be made a
laughing-stock before the most debased of all mankind, that woman and her associates.” This was really a meditation.
And then he screamed: “I will kill you all.” Once more he started worrying the door but it was a startlingly feeble
effort which he abandoned almost at once. He must have been at the end of his strength. Dona Rita from the middle of
the room asked me recklessly loud: “Tell me! Wasn’t he born to be laughed at?” I didn’t answer her. I was so near the
door that I thought I ought to hear him panting there. He was terrifying, but he was not serious. He was at the end of
his strength, of his breath, of every kind of endurance, but I did not know it. He was done up, finished; but perhaps
he did not know it himself. How still he was! Just as I began to wonder at it, I heard him distinctly give a slap to
his forehead. “I see it all!” he cried. “That miserable, canting peasant-woman upstairs has arranged it all. No doubt
she consulted her priests. I must regain my self-respect. Let her die first.” I heard him make a dash for the foot of
the stairs. I was appalled; yet to think of Therese being hoisted with her own petard was like a turn of affairs in a
farce. A very ferocious farce. Instinctively I unlocked the door. Dona Rita’s contralto laugh rang out loud, bitter,
and contemptuous; and I heard Ortega’s distracted screaming as if under torture. “It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!” I
hesitated just an instant, half a second, no more, but before I could open the door wide there was in the hall a short
groan and the sound of a heavy fall.

The sight of Ortega lying on his back at the foot of the stairs arrested me in the doorway. One of his legs was
drawn up, the other extended fully, his foot very near the pedestal of the silver statuette holding the feeble and
tenacious gleam which made the shadows so heavy in that hall. One of his arms lay across his breast. The other arm was
extended full length on the white-and-black pavement with the hand palm upwards and the fingers rigidly spread out. The
shadow of the lowest step slanted across his face but one whisker and part of his chin could be made out. He appeared
strangely flattened. He didn’t move at all. He was in his shirt-sleeves. I felt an extreme distaste for that sight. The
characteristic sound of a key worrying in the lock stole into my ears. I couldn’t locate it but I didn’t attend much to
that at first. I was engaged in watching Senor Ortega. But for his raised leg he clung so flat to the floor and had
taken on himself such a distorted shape that he might have been the mere shadow of Senor Ortega. It was rather
fascinating to see him so quiet at the end of all that fury, clamour, passion, and uproar. Surely there was never
anything so still in the world as this Ortega. I had a bizarre notion that he was not to be disturbed.

A noise like the rattling of chain links, a small grind and click exploded in the stillness of the hall and a eciov
began to swear in Italian. These surprising sounds were quite welcome, they recalled me to myself, and I perceived they
came from the front door which seemed pushed a little ajar. Was somebody trying to get in? I had no objection, I went
to the door and said: “Wait a moment, it’s on the chain.” The deep voice on the other side said: “What an extraordinary
thing,” and I assented mentally. It was extraordinary. The chain was never put up, but Therese was a thorough sort of
person, and on this night she had put it up to keep no one out except myself. It was the old Italian and his daughters
returning from the ball who were trying to get in.

Suddenly I became intensely alive to the whole situation. I bounded back, closed the door of Blunt’s room, and the
next moment was speaking to the Italian. “A little patience.” My hands trembled but I managed to take down the chain
and as I allowed the door to swing open a little more I put myself in his way. He was burly, venerable, a little
indignant, and full of thanks. Behind him his two girls, in short-skirted costumes, white stockings, and low shoes,
their heads powdered and earrings sparkling in their ears, huddled together behind their father, wrapped up in their
light mantles. One had kept her little black mask on her face, the other held hers in her hand.

The Italian was surprised at my blocking the way and remarked pleasantly, “It’s cold outside, Signor.” I said,
“Yes,” and added in a hurried whisper: “There is a dead man in the hall.” He didn’t say a single word but put me aside
a little, projected his body in for one searching glance. “Your daughters,” I murmured. He said kindly, “Va bene, va
bene.” And then to them, “Come in, girls.”

There is nothing like dealing with a man who has had a long past of out-of-the-way experiences. The skill with which
he rounded up and drove the girls across the hall, paternal and irresistible, venerable and reassuring, was a sight to
see. They had no time for more than one scared look over the shoulder. He hustled them in and locked them up safely in
their part of the house, then crossed the hall with a quick, practical stride. When near Senor Ortega he trod short
just in time and said: “In truth, blood”; then selecting the place, knelt down by the body in his tall hat and
respectable overcoat, his white beard giving him immense authority somehow. “But — this man is not dead,” he exclaimed,
looking up at me. With profound sagacity, inherent as it were in his great beard, he never took the trouble to put any
questions to me and seemed certain that I had nothing to do with the ghastly sight. “He managed to give himself an
enormous gash in his side,” was his calm remark. “And what a weapon!” he exclaimed, getting it out from under the body.
It was an Abyssinian or Nubian production of a bizarre shape; the clumsiest thing imaginable, partaking of a sickle and
a chopper with a sharp edge and a pointed end. A mere cruel-looking curio of inconceivable clumsiness to European
eyes.

The old man let it drop with amused disdain. “You had better take hold of his legs,” he decided without appeal. I
certainly had no inclination to argue. When we lifted him up the head of Senor Ortega fell back desolately, making an
awful, defenceless display of his large, white throat.

We found the lamp burning in the studio and the bed made up on the couch on which we deposited our burden. My
venerable friend jerked the upper sheet away at once and started tearing it into strips.

“You may leave him to me,” said that efficient sage, “but the doctor is your affair. If you don’t want this business
to make a noise you will have to find a discreet man.”

He was most benevolently interested in all the proceedings. He remarked with a patriarchal smile as he tore the
sheet noisily: “You had better not lose any time.” I didn’t lose any time. I crammed into the next hour an astonishing
amount of bodily activity. Without more words I flew out bare-headed into the last night of Carnival. Luckily I was
certain of the right sort of doctor. He was an iron-grey man of forty and of a stout habit of body but who was able to
put on a spurt. In the cold, dark, and deserted by-streets, he ran with earnest, and ponderous footsteps, which echoed
loudly in the cold night air, while I skimmed along the ground a pace or two in front of him. It was only on arriving
at the house that I perceived that I had left the front door wide open. All the town, every evil in the world could
have entered the black-and-white hall. But I had no time to meditate upon my imprudence. The doctor and I worked in
silence for nearly an hour and it was only then while he was washing his hands in the fencing-room that he asked:

“What was he up to, that imbecile?”

“Oh, he was examining this curiosity,” I said.

“Oh, yes, and it accidentally went off,” said the doctor, looking contemptuously at the Nubian knife I had thrown on
the table. Then while wiping his hands: “I would bet there is a woman somewhere under this; but that of course does not
affect the nature of the wound. I hope this blood-letting will do him good.”

“Nothing will do him any good,” I said.

“Curious house this,” went on the doctor, “It belongs to a curious sort of woman, too. I happened to see her once or
twice. I shouldn’t wonder if she were to raise considerable trouble in the track of her pretty feet as she goes along.
I believe you know her well.”

“Yes.”

“Curious people in the house, too. There was a Carlist officer here, a lean, tall, dark man, who couldn’t sleep. He
consulted me once. Do you know what became of him?”

“No.”

The doctor had finished wiping his hands and flung the towel far away.

“Considerable nervous over-strain. Seemed to have a restless brain. Not a good thing, that. For the rest a perfect
gentleman. And this Spaniard here, do you know him?”

“Enough not to care what happens to him,” I said, “except for the trouble he might cause to the Carlist sympathizers
here, should the police get hold of this affair.”

“Well, then, he must take his chance in the seclusion of that conservatory sort of place where you have put him.
I’ll try to find somebody we can trust to look after him. Meantime, I will leave the case to you.”

Chapter 8

Directly I had shut the door after the doctor I started shouting for Therese. “Come down at once,
you wretched hypocrite,” I yelled at the foot of the stairs in a sort of frenzy as though I had been a second Ortega.
Not even an echo answered me; but all of a sudden a small flame flickered descending from the upper darkness and
Therese appeared on the first floor landing carrying a lighted candle in front of a livid, hard face, closed against
remorse, compassion, or mercy by the meanness of her righteousness and of her rapacious instincts. She was fully
dressed in that abominable brown stuff with motionless folds, and as I watched her coming down step by step she might
have been made of wood. I stepped back and pointed my finger at the darkness of the passage leading to the studio. She
passed within a foot of me, her pale eyes staring straight ahead, her face still with disappointment and fury. Yet it
is only my surmise. She might have been made thus inhuman by the force of an invisible purpose. I waited a moment,
then, stealthily, with extreme caution, I opened the door of the so-called Captain Blunt’s room.

The glow of embers was all but out. It was cold and dark in there; but before I closed the door behind me the dim
light from the hall showed me Dona Rita standing on the very same spot where I had left her, statuesque in her
night-dress. Even after I shut the door she loomed up enormous, indistinctly rigid and inanimate. I picked up the
candelabra, groped for a candle all over the carpet, found one, and lighted it. All that time Dona Rita didn’t stir.
When I turned towards her she seemed to be slowly awakening from a trance. She was deathly pale and by contrast the
melted, sapphire-blue of her eyes looked black as coal. They moved a little in my direction, incurious, recognizing me
slowly. But when they had recognized me completely she raised her hands and hid her face in them. A whole minute or
more passed. Then I said in a low tone: “Look at me,” and she let them fall slowly as if accepting the inevitable.

“Shall I make up the fire?” . . . I waited. “Do you hear me?” She made no sound and with the tip of my
finger I touched her bare shoulder. But for its elasticity it might have been frozen. At once I looked round for the
fur coat; it seemed to me that there was not a moment to lose if she was to be saved, as though we had been lost on an
Arctic plain. I had to put her arms into the sleeves, myself, one after another. They were cold, lifeless, but
flexible. Then I moved in front of her and buttoned the thing close round her throat. To do that I had actually to
raise her chin with my finger, and it sank slowly down again. I buttoned all the other buttons right down to the
ground. It was a very long and splendid fur. Before rising from my kneeling position I felt her feet. Mere ice. The
intimacy of this sort of attendance helped the growth of my authority. “Lie down,” I murmured, “I shall pile on you
every blanket I can find here,” but she only shook her head.

Not even in the days when she ran “shrill as a cicada and thin as a match” through the chill mists of her native
mountains could she ever have felt so cold, so wretched, and so desolate. Her very soul, her grave, indignant, and
fantastic soul, seemed to drowse like an exhausted traveller surrendering himself to the sleep of death. But when I
asked her again to lie down she managed to answer me, “Not in this room.” The dumb spell was broken. She turned her
head from side to side, but oh! how cold she was! It seemed to come out of her, numbing me, too; and the very diamonds
on the arrow of gold sparkled like hoar frost in the light of the one candle.

“Not in this room; not here,” she protested, with that peculiar suavity of tone which made her voice unforgettable,
irresistible, no matter what she said. “Not after all this! I couldn’t close my eyes in this place. It’s full of
corruption and ugliness all round, in me, too, everywhere except in your heart, which has nothing to do where I
breathe. And here you may leave me. But wherever you go remember that I am not evil, I am not evil.”

I said: “I don’t intend to leave you here. There is my room upstairs. You have been in it before.”

“Oh, you have heard of that,” she whispered. The beginning of a wan smile vanished from her lips.

“I also think you can’t stay in this room; and, surely, you needn’t hesitate. . .”

“No. It doesn’t matter now. He has killed me. Rita is dead.”

While we exchanged these words I had retrieved the quilted, blue slippers and had put them on her feet. She was very
tractable. Then taking her by the arm I led her towards the door.

“He has killed me,” she repeated in a sigh. “The little joy that was in me.”

“He has tried to kill himself out there in the hall,” I said. She put back like a frightened child but she couldn’t
be dragged on as a child can be.

I assured her that the man was no longer there but she only repeated, “I can’t get through the hall. I can’t walk. I
can’t. . .”

“Well,” I said, flinging the door open and seizing her suddenly in my arms, “if you can’t walk then you shall be
carried,” and I lifted her from the ground so abruptly that she could not help catching me round the neck as any child
almost will do instinctively when you pick it up.

I ought really to have put those blue slippers in my pocket. One dropped off at the bottom of the stairs as I was
stepping over an unpleasant-looking mess on the marble pavement, and the other was lost a little way up the flight
when, for some reason (perhaps from a sense of insecurity), she began to struggle. Though I had an odd sense of being
engaged in a sort of nursery adventure she was no child to carry. I could just do it. But not if she chose to struggle.
I set her down hastily and only supported her round the waist for the rest of the way. My room, of course, was
perfectly dark but I led her straight to the sofa at once and let her fall on it. Then as if I had in sober truth
rescued her from an Alpine height or an Arctic floe, I busied myself with nothing but lighting the gas and starting the
fire. I didn’t even pause to lock my door. All the time I was aware of her presence behind me, nay, of something deeper
and more my own — of her existence itself — of a small blue flame, blue like her eyes, flickering and clear within her
frozen body. When I turned to her she was sitting very stiff and upright, with her feet posed, hieratically on the
carpet and her head emerging out of the ample fur collar, such as a gem-like flower above the rim of a dark vase. I
tore the blankets and the pillows off my bed and piled them up in readiness in a great heap on the floor near the
couch. My reason for this was that the room was large, too large for the fireplace, and the couch was nearest to the
fire. She gave no sign but one of her wistful attempts at a smile. In a most business-like way I took the arrow out of
her hair and laid it on the centre table. The tawny mass fell loose at once about her shoulders and made her look even
more desolate than before. But there was an invincible need of gaiety in her heart. She said funnily, looking at the
arrow sparkling in the gas light:

“Ah! That poor philistinish ornament!”

An echo of our early days, not more innocent but so much more youthful, was in her tone; and we both, as if touched
with poignant regret, looked at each other with enlightened eyes.

“Yes,” I said, “how far away all this is. And you wouldn’t leave even that object behind when you came last in here.
Perhaps it is for that reason it haunted me — mostly at night. I dreamed of you sometimes as a huntress nymph gleaming
white through the foliage and throwing this arrow like a dart straight at my heart. But it never reached it. It always
fell at my feet as I woke up. The huntress never meant to strike down that particular quarry.”

“The huntress was wild but she was not evil. And she was no nymph, but only a goatherd girl. Dream of her no more,
my dear.”

I had the strength of mind to make a sign of assent and busied myself arranging a couple of pillows at one end of
the sofa. “Upon my soul, goatherd, you are not responsible,” I said. “You are not! Lay down that uneasy head,” I
continued, forcing a half-playful note into my immense sadness, “that has even dreamed of a crown — but not for
itself.”

She lay down quietly. I covered her up, looked once into her eyes and felt the restlessness of fatigue over-power me
so that I wanted to stagger out, walk straight before me, stagger on and on till I dropped. In the end I lost myself in
thought. I woke with a start to her voice saying positively:

“No. Not even in this room. I can’t close my eyes. Impossible. I have a horror of myself. That voice in my ears. All
true. All true.”

She was sitting up, two masses of tawny hair fell on each side of her tense face. I threw away the pillows from
which she had risen and sat down behind her on the couch. “Perhaps like this,” I suggested, drawing her head gently on
my breast. She didn’t resist, she didn’t even sigh, she didn’t look at me or attempt to settle herself in any way. It
was I who settled her after taking up a position which I thought I should be able to keep for hours — for ages. After a
time I grew composed enough to become aware of the ticking of the clock, even to take pleasure in it. The beat recorded
the moments of her rest, while I sat, keeping as still as if my life depended upon it with my eyes fixed idly on the
arrow of gold gleaming and glittering dimly on the table under the lowered gas-jet. And presently my breathing fell
into the quiet rhythm of the sleep which descended on her at last. My thought was that now nothing mattered in the
world because I had the world safe resting in my arms — or was it in my heart?

Suddenly my heart seemed torn in two within my breast and half of my breath knocked out of me. It was a tumultuous
awakening. The day had come. Dona Rita had opened her eyes, found herself in my arms, and instantly had flung herself
out of them with one sudden effort. I saw her already standing in the filtered sunshine of the closed shutters, with
all the childlike horror and shame of that night vibrating afresh in the awakened body of the woman.

“Daylight,” she whispered in an appalled voice. “Don’t look at me, George. I can’t face daylight. No — not with you.
Before we set eyes on each other all that past was like nothing. I had crushed it all in my new pride. Nothing could
touch the Rita whose hand was kissed by you. But now! Never in daylight.”

I sat there stupid with surprise and grief. This was no longer the adventure of venturesome children in a
nursery-book. A grown man’s bitterness, informed, suspicious, resembling hatred, welled out of my heart.

“All this means that you are going to desert me again?” I said with contempt. “All right. I won’t throw stones after
you . . . Are you going, then?”

She lowered her head slowly with a backward gesture of her arm as if to keep me off, for I had sprung to my feet all
at once as if mad.

“Then go quickly,” I said. “You are afraid of living flesh and blood. What are you running after? Honesty, as you
say, or some distinguished carcass to feed your vanity on? I know how cold you can be — and yet live. What have I done
to you? You go to sleep in my arms, wake up and go away. Is it to impress me? Charlatanism of character, my dear.”

She stepped forward on her bare feet as firm on that floor which seemed to heave up and down before my eyes as she
had ever been — goatherd child leaping on the rocks of her native hills which she was never to see again. I snatched
the arrow of gold from the table and threw it after her.

“Don’t forget this thing,” I cried, “you would never forgive yourself for leaving it behind.”

It struck the back of the fur coat and fell on the floor behind her. She never looked round. She walked to the door,
opened it without haste, and on the landing in the diffused light from the ground-glass skylight there appeared, rigid,
like an implacable and obscure fate, the awful Therese — waiting for her sister. The heavy ends of a big black shawl
thrown over her head hung massively in biblical folds. With a faint cry of dismay Dona Rita stopped just within my
room.

The two women faced each other for a few moments silently. Therese spoke first. There was no austerity in her tone.
Her voice was as usual, pertinacious, unfeeling, with a slight plaint in it; terrible in its unchanged purpose.

“I have been standing here before this door all night,” she said. “I don’t know how I lived through it. I thought I
would die a hundred times for shame. So that’s how you are spending your time? You are worse than shameless. But God
may still forgive you. You have a soul. You are my sister. I will never abandon you — till you die.”

“What is it?” Dona Rita was heard wistfully, “my soul or this house that you won’t abandon.”

“Come out and bow your head in humiliation. I am your sister and I shall help you to pray to God and all the Saints.
Come away from that poor young gentleman who like all the others can have nothing but contempt and disgust for you in
his heart. Come and hide your head where no one will reproach you — but I, your sister. Come out and beat your breast:
come, poor Sinner, and let me kiss you, for you are my sister!”

While Therese was speaking Dona Rita stepped back a pace and as the other moved forward still extending the hand of
sisterly love, she slammed the door in Therese’s face. “You abominable girl!” she cried fiercely. Then she turned about
and walked towards me who had not moved. I felt hardly alive but for the cruel pain that possessed my whole being. On
the way she stooped to pick up the arrow of gold and then moved on quicker, holding it out to me in her open palm.

“You thought I wouldn’t give it to you. Amigo, I wanted nothing so much as to give it to you. And now, perhaps — you
will take it.”

“Not without the woman,” I said sombrely.

“Take it,” she said. “I haven’t the courage to deliver myself up to Therese. No. Not even for your sake. Don’t you
think I have been miserable enough yet?”

I snatched the arrow out of her hand then and ridiculously pressed it to my breast; but as I opened my lips she who
knew what was struggling for utterance in my heart cried in a ringing tone:

“Speak no words of love, George! Not yet. Not in this house of ill-luck and falsehood. Not within a hundred miles of
this house, where they came clinging to me all profaned from the mouth of that man. Haven’t you heard them — the
horrible things? And what can words have to do between you and me?”

Her hands were stretched out imploringly, I said, childishly disconcerted:

“But, Rita, how can I help using words of love to you? They come of themselves on my lips!”

SECOND NOTE

The narrative of our man goes on for some six months more, from this, the last night of the Carnival
season up to and beyond the season of roses. The tone of it is much less of exultation than might have been expected.
Love as is well known having nothing to do with reason, being insensible to forebodings and even blind to evidence, the
surrender of those two beings to a precarious bliss has nothing very astonishing in itself; and its portrayal, as he
attempts it, lacks dramatic interest. The sentimental interest could only have a fascination for readers themselves
actually in love. The response of a reader depends on the mood of the moment, so much so that a book may seem extremely
interesting when read late at night, but might appear merely a lot of vapid verbiage in the morning. My conviction is
that the mood in which the continuation of his story would appear sympathetic is very rare. This consideration has
induced me to suppress it — all but the actual facts which round up the previous events and satisfy such curiosity as
might have been aroused by the foregoing narrative.

It is to be remarked that this period is characterized more by a deep and joyous tenderness than by sheer passion.
All fierceness of spirit seems to have burnt itself out in their preliminary hesitations and struggles against each
other and themselves. Whether love in its entirety has, speaking generally, the same elementary meaning for women as
for men, is very doubtful. Civilization has been at work there. But the fact is that those two display, in every phase
of discovery and response, an exact accord. Both show themselves amazingly ingenuous in the practice of sentiment. I
believe that those who know women won’t be surprised to hear me say that she was as new to love as he was. During their
retreat in the region of the Maritime Alps, in a small house built of dry stones and embowered with roses, they appear
all through to be less like released lovers than as companions who had found out each other’s fitness in a specially
intense way. Upon the whole, I think that there must be some truth in his insistence of there having always been
something childlike in their relation. In the unreserved and instant sharing of all thoughts, all impressions, all
sensations, we see the naiveness of a children’s foolhardy adventure. This unreserved expressed for him the whole truth
of the situation. With her it may have been different. It might have been assumed; yet nobody is altogether a comedian;
and even comedians themselves have got to believe in the part they play. Of the two she appears much the more assured
and confident. But if in this she was a comedienne then it was but a great achievement of her ineradicable honesty.
Having once renounced her honourable scruples she took good care that he should taste no flavour of misgivings in the
cup. Being older it was she who imparted its character to the situation. As to the man if he had any superiority of his
own it was simply the superiority of him who loves with the greater self-surrender.

This is what appears from the pages I have discreetly suppressed — partly out of regard for the pages themselves. In
every, even terrestrial, mystery there is as it were a sacred core. A sustained commentary on love is not fit for every
eye. A universal experience is exactly the sort of thing which is most difficult to appraise justly in a particular
instance.

How this particular instance affected Rose, who was the only companion of the two hermits in their rose-embowered
hut of stones, I regret not to be able to report; but I will venture to say that for reasons on which I need not
enlarge, the girl could not have been very reassured by what she saw. It seems to me that her devotion could never be
appeased; for the conviction must have been growing on her that, no matter what happened, Madame could never have any
friends. It may be that Dona Rita had given her a glimpse of the unavoidable end, and that the girl’s tarnished eyes
masked a certain amount of apprehensive, helpless desolation.

What meantime was becoming of the fortune of Henry Allegre is another curious question. We have been told that it
was too big to be tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea. That part of it represented by the fabulous collections
was still being protected by the police. But for the rest, it may be assumed that its power and significance were lost
to an interested world for something like six months. What is certain is that the late Henry Allegre’s man of affairs
found himself comparatively idle. The holiday must have done much good to his harassed brain. He had received a note
from Dona Rita saying that she had gone into retreat and that she did not mean to send him her address, not being in
the humour to be worried with letters on any subject whatever. “It’s enough for you” — she wrote — “to know that I am
alive.” Later, at irregular intervals, he received scraps of paper bearing the stamps of various post offices and
containing the simple statement: “I am still alive,” signed with an enormous, flourished exuberant R. I imagine Rose
had to travel some distances by rail to post those messages. A thick veil of secrecy had been lowered between the world
and the lovers; yet even this veil turned out not altogether impenetrable.

He — it would be convenient to call him Monsieur George to the end — shared with Dona Rita her perfect detachment
from all mundane affairs; but he had to make two short visits to Marseilles. The first was prompted by his loyal
affection for Dominic. He wanted to discover what had happened or was happening to Dominic and to find out whether he
could do something for that man. But Dominic was not the sort of person for whom one can do much. Monsieur George did
not even see him. It looked uncommonly as if Dominic’s heart were broken. Monsieur George remained concealed for
twenty-four hours in the very house in which Madame Leonore had her cafe. He spent most of that time in conversing with
Madame Leonore about Dominic. She was distressed, but her mind was made up. That bright-eyed, nonchalant, and
passionate woman was making arrangements to dispose of her cafe before departing to join Dominic. She would not say
where. Having ascertained that his assistance was not required Monsieur George, in his own words, “managed to sneak out
of the town without being seen by a single soul that mattered.”

The second occasion was very prosaic and shockingly incongruous with the super-mundane colouring of these days. He
had neither the fortune of Henry Allegre nor a man of affairs of his own. But some rent had to be paid to somebody for
the stone hut and Rose could not go marketing in the tiny hamlet at the foot of the hill without a little money. There
came a time when Monsieur George had to descend from the heights of his love in order, in his own words, “to get a
supply of cash.” As he had disappeared very suddenly and completely for a time from the eyes of mankind it was
necessary that he should show himself and sign some papers. That business was transacted in the office of the banker
mentioned in the story. Monsieur George wished to avoid seeing the man himself but in this he did not succeed. The
interview was short. The banker naturally asked no questions, made no allusions to persons and events, and didn’t even
mention the great Legitimist Principle which presented to him now no interest whatever. But for the moment all the
world was talking of the Carlist enterprise. It had collapsed utterly, leaving behind, as usual, a large crop of
recriminations, charges of incompetency and treachery, and a certain amount of scandalous gossip. The banker (his
wife’s salon had been very Carlist indeed) declared that he had never believed in the success of the cause. “You are
well out of it,” he remarked with a chilly smile to Monsieur George. The latter merely observed that he had been very
little “in it” as a matter of fact, and that he was quite indifferent to the whole affair.

“You left a few of your feathers in it, nevertheless,” the banker concluded with a wooden face and with the curtness
of a man who knows.

Monsieur George ought to have taken the very next train out of the town but he yielded to the temptation to discover
what had happened to the house in the street of the Consuls after he and Dona Rita had stolen out of it like two scared
yet jubilant children. All he discovered was a strange, fat woman, a sort of virago, who had, apparently, been put in
as a caretaker by the man of affairs. She made some difficulties to admit that she had been in charge for the last four
months; ever since the person who was there before had eloped with some Spaniard who had been lying in the house ill
with fever for more than six weeks. No, she never saw the person. Neither had she seen the Spaniard. She had only heard
the talk of the street. Of course she didn’t know where these people had gone. She manifested some impatience to get
rid of Monsieur George and even attempted to push him towards the door. It was, he says, a very funny experience. He
noticed the feeble flame of the gas-jet in the hall still waiting for extinction in the general collapse of the
world.

Then he decided to have a bit of dinner at the Restaurant de la Gare where he felt pretty certain he would not meet
any of his friends. He could not have asked Madame Leonore for hospitality because Madame Leonore had gone away
already. His acquaintances were not the sort of people likely to happen casually into a restaurant of that kind and
moreover he took the precaution to seat himself at a small table so as to face the wall. Yet before long he felt a hand
laid gently on his shoulder, and, looking up, saw one of his acquaintances, a member of the Royalist club, a young man
of a very cheerful disposition but whose face looked down at him with a grave and anxious expression.

Monsieur George was far from delighted. His surprise was extreme when in the course of the first phrases exchanged
with him he learned that this acquaintance had come to the station with the hope of finding him there.

“You haven’t been seen for some time,” he said. “You were perhaps somewhere where the news from the world couldn’t
reach you? There have been many changes amongst our friends and amongst people one used to hear of so much. There is
Madame de Lastaola for instance, who seems to have vanished from the world which was so much interested in her. You
have no idea where she may be now?”

Monsieur George remarked grumpily that he couldn’t say.

The other tried to appear at ease. Tongues were wagging about it in Paris. There was a sort of international
financier, a fellow with an Italian name, a shady personality, who had been looking for her all over Europe and talked
in clubs — astonishing how such fellows get into the best clubs — oh! Azzolati was his name. But perhaps what a fellow
like that said did not matter. The funniest thing was that there was no man of any position in the world who had
disappeared at the same time. A friend in Paris wrote to him that a certain well-known journalist had rushed South to
investigate the mystery but had returned no wiser than he went.

Monsieur George remarked more unamiably than before that he really could not help all that.

“No,” said the other with extreme gentleness, “only of all the people more or less connected with the Carlist affair
you are the only one that had also disappeared before the final collapse.”

“What!” cried Monsieur George.

“Just so,” said the other meaningly. “You know that all my people like you very much, though they hold various
opinions as to your discretion. Only the other day Jane, you know my married sister, and I were talking about you. She
was extremely distressed. I assured her that you must be very far away or very deeply buried somewhere not to have
given a sign of life under this provocation.

Naturally Monsieur George wanted to know what it was all about; and the other appeared greatly relieved.

“I was sure you couldn’t have heard. I don’t want to be indiscreet, I don’t want to ask you where you were. It came
to my ears that you had been seen at the bank to-day and I made a special effort to lay hold of you before you vanished
again; for, after all, we have been always good friends and all our lot here liked you very much. Listen. You know a
certain Captain Blunt, don’t you?”

Monsieur George owned to knowing Captain Blunt but only very slightly. His friend then informed him that this
Captain Blunt was apparently well acquainted with Madame de Lastaola, or, at any rate, pretended to be. He was an
honourable man, a member of a good club, he was very Parisian in a way, and all this, he continued, made all the worse
that of which he was under the painful necessity of warning Monsieur George. This Blunt on three distinct occasions
when the name of Madame de Lastaola came up in conversation in a mixed company of men had expressed his regret that she
should have become the prey of a young adventurer who was exploiting her shamelessly. He talked like a man certain of
his facts and as he mentioned names. . .

“In fact,” the young man burst out excitedly, “it is your name that he mentions. And in order to fix the exact
personality he always takes care to add that you are that young fellow who was known as Monsieur George all over the
South amongst the initiated Carlists.”

How Blunt had got enough information to base that atrocious calumny upon, Monsieur George couldn’t imagine. But
there it was. He kept silent in his indignation till his friend murmured, “I expect you will want him to know that you
are here.”

“Yes,” said Monsieur George, “and I hope you will consent to act for me altogether. First of all, pray, let him know
by wire that I am waiting for him. This will be enough to fetch him down here, I can assure you. You may ask him also
to bring two friends with him. I don’t intend this to be an affair for Parisian journalists to write paragraphs
about.”

“Yes. That sort of thing must be stopped at once,” the other admitted. He assented to Monsieur George’s request that
the meeting should be arranged for at his elder brother’s country place where the family stayed very seldom. There was
a most convenient walled garden there. And then Monsieur George caught his train promising to be back on the fourth day
and leaving all further arrangements to his friend. He prided himself on his impenetrability before Dona Rita; on the
happiness without a shadow of those four days. However, Dona Rita must have had the intuition of there being something
in the wind, because on the evening of the very same day on which he left her again on some pretence or other, she was
already ensconced in the house in the street of the Consuls, with the trustworthy Rose scouting all over the town to
gain information.

Of the proceedings in the walled garden there is no need to speak in detail. They were conventionally correct, but
an earnestness of purpose which could be felt in the very air lifted the business above the common run of affairs of
honour. One bit of byplay unnoticed by the seconds, very busy for the moment with their arrangements, must be
mentioned. Disregarding the severe rules of conduct in such cases Monsieur George approached his adversary and
addressed him directly.

“Captain Blunt,” he said, “the result of this meeting may go against me. In that case you will recognize publicly
that you were wrong. For you are wrong and you know it. May I trust your honour?”

In answer to that appeal Captain Blunt, always correct, didn’t open his lips but only made a little bow. For the
rest he was perfectly ruthless. If he was utterly incapable of being carried away by love there was nothing equivocal
about his jealousy. Such psychology is not very rare and really from the point of view of the combat itself one cannot
very well blame him. What happened was this. Monsieur George fired on the word and, whether luck or skill, managed to
hit Captain Blunt in the upper part of the arm which was holding the pistol. That gentleman’s arm dropped powerless by
his side. But he did not drop his weapon. There was nothing equivocal about his determination. With the greatest
deliberation he reached with his left hand for his pistol and taking careful aim shot Monsieur George through the left
side of his breast. One may imagine the consternation of the four seconds and the activity of the two surgeons in the
confined, drowsy heat of that walled garden. It was within an easy drive of the town and as Monsieur George was being
conveyed there at a walking pace a little brougham coming from the opposite direction pulled up at the side of the
road. A thickly veiled woman’s head looked out of the window, took in the state of affairs at a glance, and called out
in a firm voice: “Follow my carriage.” The brougham turning round took the lead. Long before this convoy reached the
town another carriage containing four gentlemen (of whom one was leaning back languidly with his arm in a sling)
whisked past and vanished ahead in a cloud of white, Provencal dust. And this is the last appearance of Captain Blunt
in Monsieur George’s narrative. Of course he was only told of it later. At the time he was not in a condition to notice
things. Its interest in his surroundings remained of a hazy and nightmarish kind for many days together. From time to
time he had the impression that he was in a room strangely familiar to him, that he had unsatisfactory visions of Dona
Rita, to whom he tried to speak as if nothing had happened, but that she always put her hand on his mouth to prevent
him and then spoke to him herself in a very strange voice which sometimes resembled the voice of Rose. The face, too,
sometimes resembled the face of Rose. There were also one or two men’s faces which he seemed to know well enough though
he didn’t recall their names. He could have done so with a slight effort, but it would have been too much trouble. Then
came a time when the hallucinations of Dona Rita and the faithful Rose left him altogether. Next came a period, perhaps
a year, or perhaps an hour, during which he seemed to dream all through his past life. He felt no apprehension, he
didn’t try to speculate as to the future. He felt that all possible conclusions were out of his power, and therefore he
was indifferent to everything. He was like that dream’s disinterested spectator who doesn’t know what is going to
happen next. Suddenly for the first time in his life he had the soul-satisfying consciousness of floating off into deep
slumber.

When he woke up after an hour, or a day, or a month, there was dusk in the room; but he recognized it perfectly. It
was his apartment in Dona Rita’s house; those were the familiar surroundings in which he had so often told himself that
he must either die or go mad. But now he felt perfectly clear-headed and the full sensation of being alive came all
over him, languidly delicious. The greatest beauty of it was that there was no need to move. This gave him a sort of
moral satisfaction. Then the first thought independent of personal sensations came into his head. He wondered when
Therese would come in and begin talking. He saw vaguely a human figure in the room but that was a man. He was speaking
in a deadened voice which had yet a preternatural distinctness.

“This is the second case I have had in this house, and I am sure that directly or indirectly it was connected with
that woman. She will go on like this leaving a track behind her and then some day there will be really a corpse. This
young fellow might have been it.”

“In this case, Doctor,” said another voice, “one can’t blame the woman very much. I assure you she made a very
determined fight.”

“What do you mean? That she didn’t want to . . . ”

“Yes. A very good fight. I heard all about it. It is easy to blame her, but, as she asked me despairingly, could she
go through life veiled from head to foot or go out of it altogether into a convent? No, she isn’t guilty. She is simply
— what she is.”

“And what’s that?”

“Very much of a woman. Perhaps a little more at the mercy of contradictory impulses than other women. But that’s not
her fault. I really think she has been very honest.”

The voices sank suddenly to a still lower murmur and presently the shape of the man went out of the room. Monsieur
George heard distinctly the door open and shut. Then he spoke for the first time, discovering, with a particular
pleasure, that it was quite easy to speak. He was even under the impression that he had shouted:

“Who is here?”

From the shadow of the room (he recognized at once the characteristic outlines of the bulky shape) Mills advanced to
the side of the bed. Dona Rita had telegraphed to him on the day of the duel and the man of books, leaving his retreat,
had come as fast as boats and trains could carry him South. For, as he said later to Monsieur George, he had become
fully awake to his part of responsibility. And he added: “It was not of you alone that I was thinking.” But the very
first question that Monsieur George put to him was:

“How long is it since I saw you last?”

“Something like ten months,” answered Mills’ kindly voice.

“Ah! Is Therese outside the door? She stood there all night, you know.”

“Yes, I heard of it. She is hundreds of miles away now.”

“Well, then, ask Rita to come in.”

“I can’t do that, my dear boy,” said Mills with affectionate gentleness. He hesitated a moment. “Dona Rita went away
yesterday,” he said softly.

“Went away? Why?” asked Monsieur George.

“Because, I am thankful to say, your life is no longer in danger. And I have told you that she is gone because,
strange as it may seem, I believe you can stand this news better now than later when you get stronger.”

It must be believed that Mills was right. Monsieur George fell asleep before he could feel any pang at that
intelligence. A sort of confused surprise was in his mind but nothing else, and then his eyes closed. The awakening was
another matter. But that, too, Mills had foreseen. For days he attended the bedside patiently letting the man in the
bed talk to him of Dona Rita but saying little himself; till one day he was asked pointedly whether she had ever talked
to him openly. And then he said that she had, on more than one occasion. “She told me amongst other things,” Mills
said, “if this is any satisfaction to you to know, that till she met you she knew nothing of love. That you were to her
in more senses than one a complete revelation.”

“And then she went away. Ran away from the revelation,” said the man in the bed bitterly.

“What’s the good of being angry?” remonstrated Mills, gently. “You know that this world is not a world for lovers,
not even for such lovers as you two who have nothing to do with the world as it is. No, a world of lovers would be
impossible. It would be a mere ruin of lives which seem to be meant for something else. What this something is, I don’t
know; and I am certain,” he said with playful compassion, “that she and you will never find out.”

A few days later they were again talking of Dona Rita Mills said:

“Before she left the house she gave me that arrow she used to wear in her hair to hand over to you as a keepsake and
also to prevent you, she said, from dreaming of her. This message sounds rather cryptic.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” said Monsieur George. “Don’t give me the thing now. Leave it somewhere where I can
find it some day when I am alone. But when you write to her you may tell her that now at last — surer than Mr. Blunt’s
bullet — the arrow has found its mark. There will be no more dreaming. Tell her. She will understand.”

“I don’t even know where she is,” murmured Mills.

“No, but her man of affairs knows. . . . Tell me, Mills, what will become of her?”

“She will be wasted,” said Mills sadly. “She is a most unfortunate creature. Not even poverty could save her now.
She cannot go back to her goats. Yet who can tell? She may find something in life. She may! It won’t be love. She has
sacrificed that chance to the integrity of your life — heroically. Do you remember telling her once that you meant to
live your life integrally — oh, you lawless young pedant! Well, she is gone; but you may be sure that whatever she
finds now in life it will not be peace. You understand me? Not even in a convent.”

“She was supremely lovable,” said the wounded man, speaking of her as if she were lying dead already on his
oppressed heart.

“And elusive,” struck in Mills in a low voice. “Some of them are like that. She will never change. Amid all the
shames and shadows of that life there will always lie the ray of her perfect honesty. I don’t know about your honesty,
but yours will be the easier lot. You will always have your . . . other love — you pig-headed enthusiast of
the sea.”

“Then let me go to it,” cried the enthusiast. “Let me go to it.”

He went to it as soon as he had strength enough to feel the crushing weight of his loss (or his gain) fully, and
discovered that he could bear it without flinching. After this discovery he was fit to face anything. He tells his
correspondent that if he had been more romantic he would never have looked at any other woman. But on the contrary. No
face worthy of attention escaped him. He looked at them all; and each reminded him of Dona Rita, either by some
profound resemblance or by the startling force of contrast.

The faithful austerity of the sea protected him from the rumours that fly on the tongues of men. He never heard of
her. Even the echoes of the sale of the great Allegre collection failed to reach him. And that event must have made
noise enough in the world. But he never heard. He does not know. Then, years later, he was deprived even of the arrow.
It was lost to him in a stormy catastrophe; and he confesses that next day he stood on a rocky, wind-assaulted shore,
looking at the seas raging over the very spot of his loss and thought that it was well. It was not a thing that one
could leave behind one for strange hands — for the cold eyes of ignorance. Like the old King of Thule with the gold
goblet of his mistress he would have had to cast it into the sea, before he died. He says he smiled at the romantic
notion. But what else could he have done with it?

This web edition published by:

eBooks@Adelaide
The University of Adelaide Library
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005